Unthreaded #8

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This entry was written by John A, posted on Apr 5, 2007 at 2:05 PM, filed under General. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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There has been an active debate whether global warming will result in a net gain or net loss for United States agriculture. With mounting evidence that climate is warming, we show that such warming will have substantial impacts on agricultural yields by the end of the century: yields of three major crops in the United States are predicted to decrease by 25-44% under the slowest warming scenario and 60-79% under the most rapid warming scenario in our preferred model.

The latest United Nations assessment of the role of humans in global warming has found with “high confidence” that greenhouse gas emissions are at least partly responsible for a host of changes already under way, including longer growing seasons and shrinking glaciers.

Here’s a very simple way to estimate climate sensitivity (I hope not simplistic :)) Without any greenhouse gases, it is generally estimated that the planet’s average temperature would be -18 deg. C. But due to greenhouse gases (mainly HOH) it averages 32 deg. So the change is 18 + 32 = 50 degrees. Dividing this by the usually cited average solar radiation of 343 w/m2 gives a sensitivity of 0.15 deg/wm-2. Dang, my other empirical estimates for various locations averages only 0.11. But I’ve only considered the USA, Aand who knows how close the -18, 32, and 343 figures are to reality.

By the way, snow flurries are possible in the far northern suburbs of Houston (US) this weekend, which would be extraordinary.

I noted in another thread here that my tulips were earlier than I could remember and I was going to be mowing my grass at significantly earlier date also. That was all related to a warm late March we had here in Northern IL — even though the remainder of our late winter was normal. Guess what folks. I mowed my grass and nearly froze my bu?? off and my poor beautiful tulips are drooping to the ground blooms and all. We call that weather here and not all that unusual either.

Interesting news, it came to my attention a French politico recently carped about the American failure (so far) to institute carbon trading markets. He pointed out that it was Americans who pushed “emissions trading” into the evolving Kyotos protocols.

I checked into this, and lo and behold, it was Americans that did such, in 1998, and guess who was the person personally intervening for it? No less than Al Gore. So we have now Gore pushing crypto-Kyoto carbon trading markets under the cover of apocalyptic propaganda, the very same person who pushed carbon trading markets into Kyoto!

So far cannot find who the person/s who invented the idea of this trading, but wouldn’t be surprised if they were connected to Goldman Sachs. As an American, and with a little guilt, I feel impressed our scammers can devise bigger scams than the Western European politicos with their mere green taxes.

#4 here’s a question: if global warming has “flatlined” AND the primary driver of climate is solar radiation…then why have temperatures been “flatlining” over the last seven years while the 11-year solar irradiance cycle has been decreasing? For that matter, why wouldn’t you expect warming to increase when the 11-year cycle ticks back up (beginning right around now)?

For that matter, why don’t you think that there would still be extremes in a warmer climate? Record lows, cold seasons, even temporary downward trends?

#5: actually you’re not the first to make this estimate. The problem you face is that the empirical data don’t seem to support this sensitivity. Therefore, something else must be going on, i.e. climate must be more complicated than that. (This is why people argue about sea temperature measurements.)

#6: see my comments to #4. Why should your local temperature reflect the global average? (For that matter, why should March in northern Illinois tell us anything about even the US average for the entire year? Why should it even tell us about the northern Illinios average for the entire year?) Of course there would still be cold Aprils in Illiniois, even in a warmer world.

The gray body temperature of an earth without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but with the same albedo (0.3) is 255 K. The average temperature is normally quoted as 288 K for a difference of 33 degrees, not 50. Total incoming radiation at the surface is about 490 watts/sq.m. including sunlight and long wave IR from the atmosphere. The earth’s surface radiates 390 W/sq.m. of IR and loses an additional 100 W from latent heat loss (related to evaporation of water) plus sensible heat loss due to convective transfer to the atmosphere (wind, e.g.) to balance the energy input. But these are averages over the full year and the full surface of the earth. And that’s the end of the simple part. It’s not sufficient information to derive a climate sensitivity for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Too many things are unknown.

It’s fairly easy to construct a crude one-dimensional mathematical model in Excel of a stationary atmosphere (no sensible heat transfer) containing a non-condensible greenhouse gas (no latent heat transfer) using the ideal gas law, the Stefan-Boltzman equation and Beer’s law and assuming a constant temperature lapse rate with altitude to get an idea of how the greenhouse effect really works. In that model, changing the concentration and hence the fraction of IR absorption and emission of the greenhouse gas by only 5% changes the surface temperature 1 degree Kelvin. I’m still working on a model that includes water vapor but no clouds. That’s a lot harder. It might be more interesting to do a two dimensional model from pole to pole first. But even that would be quite difficult.

10 mzed: You are correct; others have done similar calculations. However, there are probably 20 empirical demonstrations that climate sensitivity is below 0.3 deg/wm-2. So please tell me why I should believe in voodoo climate models, which seem to be the only alternative source for information on climate sensitivity. Or tell me just how the IPPC derives such high sensitivity levels. Steve M. has been asking this question for a long time, and the climate scientists either don’t have an answer, or they won’t talk to us. LOL.

#4 here’s a question: if global warming has “flatlined” AND the primary driver of climate is solar radiation…then why have temperatures been “flatlining” over the last seven years while the 11-year solar irradiance cycle has been decreasing? For that matter, why wouldn’t you expect warming to increase when the 11-year cycle ticks back up (beginning right around now)?

Back at you, man: why is it “flatlined” if CO2 has anything to do with temperature?

#8
As I recall, the US proposed offsets such as credits for forests as a trade off for signing Kyoto. Ironically, the Europeans rejected the idea because they said we don’t know the role of forests in CO2 and the carbon cycle. At that time people were looking for the ‘missing sink’ and many believed it was the boreal forest. It exceeded the human production in most years. This huge gap in knowledge didn’t present them pushing ahead with a seriously flawed treaty because it never was about the science, it was a political document that provided for a transfer of wealth. We only began measuring input and output of the boreal forest in North America a few years ago, about the time the bargaining was occurring. Of course, Its possible Gore saw this as a way around a recalcitrant Senate that eventually voted 95-0 against the Protocol.

Interesting sea ice paper , John. It’s enjoyable to look at older (1978) papers – I sometimes wonder what those earlier, less-ideological minds could have done using higher-quality modern data.

The paper shows big interannual ice extent changes, as you note. Those swings don’t seem to be in the Cryosphere Today data. Also, the relatively warm Arctic temperature in the early 1950s, and the large drop from then until 1965, don’t clearly appear in today’s NOAA temperature reconstructions.

The Arctic portrayed in the 1978 paper is dynamic and variable. Modern reconstructions, however, seem to show the 1953-1977 era as rather tame.

I noticed their attempt to correlate air temperature and sea ice extent over 1953-1977 gave, at best, r= -0.2 (unsmoothed data, Figure 13). Not strong. To me, that supports the idea that other factors, like winds and currents, play a major role in Arctic ice extent variability.

I did look at your calculations. They’re wrong. You’re saying the average temperature of the earth’s surface is plus 32 C. That’s 90 F. I don’t think so. It’s more like 15 C or 59 F. That gives 18 + 15 or 33 degrees difference. The greenhouse effect makes the planet 33 degrees warmer than it would be without the greenhouse not a temperature of 33 (or 32) C.

There’s also the fact that the EU population was flat or declining while the US was expected to continue to expand. By putting an absolute limit on emissions rather than a per capita limit, the EU would gain a substantial economic advantage over the US if we had been stupid enough to implement Kyoto. The treaty was more mercantilist in intent than environmental.

In my readings (via google books), your memory is correct. At the same time of the market advocacy, the Americans were advocating “sinks.” Most mentioned was farms – surely our clever agribusiness thought up another way to be paid not to grow food. Forests were often mentioned too – we got a lot of them relative to many nations – and owners would like to get some free money.

RE #10 Hello, mzed. I’m agnostic on solar cycle / climate connections (= no opinion), so someone else would have to answer your initial, specific question. (By the way, I’m also a believer in AGW, but that’s an AGW that is much milder in impact than the apocalyptic visions of Mr Gore.)

On your second question, there would certainly be variability in a generally-warming world, meaning that periods of natural cooling would still occur despite a background trend of rising temperatures.

By the same reasoning, one should also expect periods of natural warming “piggybacking” on a trend of generally-rising temperatures, exaggerating the overall warming. Could it be that the post-1976 warming is a combination of a natural oscillation (PDO, ENSO, etc) plus AGW, creating an apparent rate-of-rise that is higher than the AGW portion alone?

The anecdotes on cold local weather, like Ken’s tulips and my snow flurries and Sadlov’s ice bridges, are in the spirit of poking fun at those in the media who turn every warm weather phenomena into scare-stories. They are weather, not climate, nad we’ve labeled them as such in the past.

Best regards, mzed, and thanks for the questions as they help the discussion.

In our town GHG committee, we’re working hard on mitigation [IPCC-style], to measure what we’re doing, prioritize things to do, figure out how to help education, and when necessary, think about changing town laws. Many of us have already been over the houses with Watts-Up, started using compact fluorescents years ago, use solar heating for pools, PV solar (when possible;, this town adores trees, but they can get in the way :-)), use geothermal, etc, etc. Some people are building new houses that are not only energy neutral in operation, but try to minimize the carbon load from materials and construction.

I would never argue against any of this; many of these have fine ROIs.

My point was that even if everybody on the planet magically did all this tomorrow, the temperature and sealevel will still go up for a while [just slower], and we’ll still have to spend money on adaptation/extra maintenance. For instance, in CA, there will almost certainly have to be some serious engineering works ($, energy), and these will be necessary, but just to avoid worse disasters, and they will cost $$, and they do compete with other uses for the money. It is definitely better to fix levees ahead of time, but it still costs $, and it is still sometimes hard to get people to pay for the bond measures… even in a rich place that usually plans for disasters. I have no idea how well the economists are modeling all this, although I’m certainly sure that some efforts better start earlier rather than later. For instance, we ought to get really serious about where people can build new houses at low altitudes.

Ken, I’m increasingly of the opinion that research such as Lobell & Field’s and especially Schlenker & Roberts’ is not worth much more than the paper it is printed on.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there are some major flaws in their research – not the least of which is attempting to correlate high temperatures with yield loss. In my opinion this is the wrong approach because temperature is not the predominant factor for yield loss. Longstanding knowledge about corn and soybeans tells us that both of these crops can withstand temperatures in the upper extremes without loss of yield – if there is an ample supply of moisture.

As I referenced to you earlier, the Purdue publication shows the heat tolerance of corn to be 95 degrees F at the upper limit. I was looking through the Illinois Agronomy Handbook today and it puts the upper limit at 100 degrees F (without yield loss) for both corn and soybeans. Of course, these tolerances are wholly dependent upon an ample supply of moisture being available to the plant but it should however be a strong indicator that moisture availability is the principle component of yield loss and any research should be focused on moisture first.

This presents an inconvenient problem for these scientists because of the enormous difficulty in identifying and quantifying the numerous soil types and their differing water holding capacities throughout the major grain producing regions, but failing to do so is a disservice to the science.

Another inconvenient problem is that global warming is inextricably linked to rising temperatures and any attempt at fueling the debate needs to be focused upon this particular variable. I guess this is why we are seeing study after study aimed in on temperature as the sole driver, but again, this is bad science.

You also touched on a couple of other “problems” that are certainly worthy of discussion. One of these is CO2 fertilization. There is sufficient evidence that increased CO2 concentrations decrease evapotranspiration rates within the plant which in turn increases drought tolerance. But as you said, these researchers dismiss this as controversial yet there’s enough data to suggest otherwise. Any reasonable attempt at making future yield predictions should include some type of accounting for CO2 and it’s effects.

I am also puzzled over Schlenker and Robrts’ failure to account for an extended growing season and earlier planting in a warmer environment. If you follow the link here:

this paper shows that since the early 1980’s, corn planting is occurring approximately 2 weeks earlier because of the warming we have experienced. This should be an important consideration in any research focused on predicting future yields in a warmer world because it allows us the ability to mitigate the effects of higher temps at the crucial points in the plants development. At some point in time we may be planting in January but the point is we will be able to adapt. Who knows, there might come a point in time that we are raising two crops in a season. Now wouldn’t that bake the AGW alarmist’s noodle!

Finally, you asked about the large spread on soybean yields. As you move South here in the U.S., diseases do become more predominant. However, this in itself is not the sole yield limiting factor because losses due to disease is almost always linked to other stresses on the plant. This is what I refer to as “stress on stress” and given the soil limitations in the Southern states, I would guess the two combined is why you’re seeing greater variability. Here in Illinois in 2003 we experienced much the same type of situation. Soybean yields that year surprised a lot of people because they were so low. Looking back there were a multitude of problems which developed and it was hard to pin the blame on any one factor. In the end it was the stress on stress I referred to and this quote from Dean Malvick in the U of I Crop Bulletin sums it up nicely:

He said, “So what caused the low yields in 2003? Unfortunately, we don’t have data to suggest the relative impact of disease, drought, and aphids (or other factors). All of these were important in some areas in Illinois, and there were interactions. The root rots increased problems with drought, drought increased charcoal rot, and we are not sure yet about possible interactions with the soybean aphid. We cannot focus just on one problem because, as has often been said, causality is multiple.”

stupid question — is there any place where a complete statement of assumptions underlying the AGW postulate is listed in a concise way? That is, does anyone know where to review a listing of assumptions written in some form like:

1. atmospheric nitrogen is assumed to have no effect –
2. the atmosphere is assumed to be a control mass —
3. the atmosphere is assumed to occupy larger volumes at higher global average temperatures –
4. CO2 is assumed to behave in the atmosphere in the same manner as demonstrated in the ________ chemical laboratory experiment (citation). All variations in results due to pressure, temperature and excitement due to direct radiation are assumed to comply the results of the ______ experiment. The ideal gas law is assumed to apply in all cases.

5. it is assumed that gravity alone produces pressure in the atmosphere, although pressure is not uniform at uniform elevations due to known, quantifiable effects that include _________, ______, _______, ______ —

6. all solar cycles at every recurrence interval are assumed to be known and therefore all possible superpositions created by overlapping solar cycles are also known and can be plotted —

7. etc. — to end of assumptions list ???

An engineer assigned to the AGW challenge would be likely to maintain an up-to-date statement of assumptions at the forefront of the work, and to reassess each assumption on a continuous or regular basis. Has anyone seen such a thing? No, I am not trying to make some great point. I don’t have any special expertise, and I have no argument to offer. I am just curious.

Interesting news, it came to my attention a French politico recently carped about the American failure (so far) to institute carbon trading markets. He pointed out that it was Americans who pushed “emissions trading” into the evolving Kyotos protocols

#10
Mzed,
I think you will have to reference the Russians on solar activity. When they speak of increased solar activty, they are not speaking of the 11 year solar cycle, but a small (1-2%) increase in solar radiation sustained over several decades if not centuries. They measure small variations in the size of the sun (using satellites) to plot these increases. Thier arguments deal with long term changes, not decade long oscilations. Dr Habibullo Abdusamatov, of the Pulakov Observatory is one of thier leading scientists on this field.

By way of comparison, yesterday, the data showed that 1999 was the lowest sea ice extent year and 2006/7 were higher than even 1990 for example. Not anymore.

Reminds me of some other restatements done by the Hadley Centre and the GISS. It is disturbing that data which is considered “climate history” can be so easily just done away with and a completely new set of data just inserted.

Steve, this is the sort of thing that makes me want to start a third-party archiving site. Wouldn’t it be great if people wrote little scripts to import data from various other public domain databases and store it permanently? Each version could have a time stamp attached, Then you could look at the state of the data at any particular time, and examine what has changed. Also, scripts which download & process the data would be guaranteed to produce identical results in future, as you could download the specific version of the data you use initially.

I really think data should never be deleted or replaced. Rather, a new version should be created, if necessary. That would be the paradigm I would use.

Unfortunately, while such a project would not be terribly difficult, it would require some spare time… and since I haven’t retired yet I don’t have much :(

RE: #15 – In the humid continental and humid subtropical climate zones of North America, I suspect that the peak in actual use of arable land must have been reached back some time around WW2. Since then, as agriculture has been taken up by the Southwestern US and other irrigation oriented areas of Western North America, major portions of the former earlier Eastern “breadbaskets” have gone fallow and in many cases succeeded back to forest. This is especially true in New England, where the quality of the soil was marginal to begin with. All up and down the Eastern Seaboard, succession has occurred to an extent. You have to get down into Georgia to see really robust ag. That has got to have had an impact on carbon sequestration.

#29. Nicholas, I agree entirely. I have dozens if not hundreds of little retrieval scripts that, in and of theselves are not newsworthy. However, for anyone wanting to study one of these papers – and mostly I don;t get the impression that anyone ever reads most of these papers beyond the abstract – little retrieval scripts of the type that the author should have archived in the first instance would be useful. Some of the things that you and I have corresponded on retrieving temperature data are of this sort. I think that a Wiki format would work. It would need to be organized by article. I’ve got lots and lots of material. John A is busy for a while earning a living and can’t attend to it

RE: #31 – What’s both interesting and shocking about that is that for over one year, from ~ July 2005 to ~ November 2006, I made daily comparisons between Cryosphere Today’s visuals of ice extent, and, the NWS Anchorage office’ own ice maps. Now I realize Anchorage office’ maps are only a small sliver of Cryosphere’s. But still, it was telling. In fact, even using whatever old method they were using, Cryosphere routinely UNDERREPORTED extent, in the aforementioned area of observation, versus the far more trustworthy NWS charts (which are made using a combination of visual band from satellites, reports from seamen and fishermen, aircraft and observations from seaside communities). There is something innately wrong with the satellite data and how it’s used (and abused) by the various global cryo sites.

Steve McIntyre – Yes, I remember you mentioned wiki. I thought you were suggestion that it should be used to share scripts for downloading the data. Are you suggesting that the wiki could be used to also store copies of interesting data for posterity? I suppose that’s a possibility, but could be a little haphazard. At least, if you store data on a wiki, even if someone changes it you have a history and you can go back and see the original – that’s worth something.

The advantage of actually writing some specific software for such an archive would be, I think, to have a consistent download format (or formats) that are easy to import into languages like R, as well as a search tool, and a way to submit data from languages like R too. I guess you might as well try the wiki approach, if it doesn’t work there’s always a chance to go another route later.

Here in Illinois in 2003 we experienced much the same type of situation. Soybean yields that year surprised a lot of people because they were so low. Looking back there were a multitude of problems which developed and it was hard to pin the blame on any one factor. In the end it was the stress on stress I referred to and this quote from Dean Malvick in the U of I Crop Bulletin sums it up nicely…

Thanks, Barry B., for your replies about and insights into the climate-crop yield issue. I think we agree that the relationship is more complicated than some of these authors imply in their papers on the subject matter.

I found your comment on the 2003 soybean yields was most appropriate to this situation. I was familiar with it from reading the crop reports that my recently deceased father used to send me (they ended with his death at 94 years old and his long time subscription). The corn crop was surprisingly excellent that year while the soybeans yields were off significantly. It was one of those outlier points on my IL soybean yield versus the moisture/temperature product plot that when I went back to the reports for that year mentioned soybean aphids (I think). I knew that the situation was closer to what you described and it was what put off my attributing these negative deviations to outliers statuses — as unrelated to temperature/moisture conditions. I do not want to be guilty of over simplifying as I accuse some of the recent papers’ authors.

I continue to see articles about the surprisingly low soybean yields of 2003 and questions being asked about the adequacy of “farm management” to handle that situation and whether more aggressive actions could have been taken to avoid it. I get the idea that it remains a bit of a mystery but “stress on stress” fits with my recollections

Thanks for your links to the ‘Doomsday called off’ videos on YouTube. I’ve just finished watching them and what struck me most (given that these were made in 2004) is how little has changed in the three years or so since they were made. I think they deserve a re-run so to speak in the MSM in parallel with ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ so that joe-public can decide who is being reasonable and who isn’t, who is presenting the facts in a balanced way and who is cherrying picking and being deliberately alarmist.

“…For the 21st century, the Canadian model projects that percentage increases in precipitation will be largest in the Southwest and California…In the Hadley model, the largest percentage increases in precipitation are projected to be in the Southwest and Southern California…

…The Hadley and Canadian models project strong increases in soil moisture in the Southwest…”

RE: #40 – read the link I posted on the Water Vapor thread. These people among the hysterical set making such statements regarding SW drought don’t know their ….. from a hole in the ground. Funny they don’t bring up PDO, AMO, El Nino, La Nina, etc. Even the most cursory review of the body of literature, regarding drought in the Western US, will feature lots of references to such factors. For what it’s worth, I personally believe that the current (and spreading) drought is attributable to a series of La Ninas, and, the emerging (in fits and starts since 1998) Negative PDO. Part of living in the SW US. Deal with it folks.

RE: #40 Maybe they are both right. The models should show a high likelyhood for permenant drought – because the whole southwest is a desert. In a normal year we are in drought conditions most of the time just about anywhere below 7,000 feet elevation.

Some people find this hard to believe, but it is true. Even longtime residents forget this is a desert. I live in the southwest, and work as a forester. Being a forester people are always asking me to come over and look at the dying tree in their yard. My most common diagnosis? : overwatering.

That is a bit of a facetious reply. In truth, I would not have a very strong confidence in any prediction at this point. So much goes into determening whether we are in a serious drought or not (including changes in winter precip driven by the PDO and el nino, evapotranspiration rates, summer clouds during the monsoon, etc), and one part of the southwest can have gains while another loses – especially in a scenario where warmer temps cause the summer monsoons to shift northward.

#42. Nordic, it seems to me that even dendroclimatologists seem to forget that upper treeline trees in a desert are still in a desert. They assert that they are temperature proxies, but the limitations on such trees (bristlecones, foxtails, Dulan junipers etc) seem much more complicated to me.

Colorado Springs is considered an alpine desert. Much, if not most, of CO is that way. Southern Cal, too. Grass grows because people put it there and take care of it. It is an endless struggle to keep my brown (or browning) lawn from simply blowing away in the wind. :)

In case you missed it, the IPCC WGII has put its paranoid, the-end-is-nigh fantasies of flooding, famine, drought, plagues and the arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in print: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf

RE: #46 and previous similar. In my area, there are many Coast Live Oaks. These are evergreen oaks with small waxy, hollyesque, spikey leaves. There is a disease known as sudden oak death syndrome, fungal in nature. We had a massive wave of it after the 98 El Nino. There are ongoing cases of it where people put in lawns and other Eastern vegetation completely surrounding the oaks on their property. DOH!

When I was a bit younger, I lived at the NW fringe of the LA megasprawl. During the 80s, we had a drought which started at the end of the 82 – 83 El Nino and had yet to break when I left in 87. I think it lasted until 91. There was a gradation as you went north. Norcal only was in true drought from 89 to 91. No drought in Oregon during that time.

In my copy of the Economist that arrived today, there is an article on the Canadian seal hunt, which it claims is endangered by global warming. It states “thanks to an unusually warm winter, the ice is melting early in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where hunting began this week. The seal pups on which the hunt preys are reared on the ice until they are old enough to swim. So the premature thaw has drowned them — before the hunters had the chance to kill many.”

Was the eastern Canadian winter really that mild overall? I believe it started out mild, but I thought on average it was pretty typical.

#6: see my comments to #4. Why should your local temperature reflect the global average? (For that matter, why should March in northern Illinois tell us anything about even the US average for the entire year? Why should it even tell us about the northern Illinios average for the entire year?) Of course there would still be cold Aprils in Illiniois, even in a warmer world.

What makes you think that was not my point — which I have made a few times here previously? Evidently climate/weather is like a MA congressman used to say about politics: its local. And I’ll add varied and even local average temperatures with a changing global temperature.

RE #49 Curt, the 90-day global temperature anomaly is shown on the bottom map of this link . The southern Gulf of St Lawrence (which I take to be near Prince Edward Island) looks like it had a rather normal winter, at least since Christmas.

RE#4 and 6 – You do realize that such “extreme” and “unexpected” weather events are consistent with global warming?

Only a denialist, and one in very deep denial at that, could possibly even image anything good coming out of AGW. It’s evidently all bad according to the consensus of scientists doing the FAR, and while, if that were coming from politicians and/or advocates, I’d say they were in over-sell mode — but scientist –well scientist don’t act like that — do they?

Toronto had a near-record stretch of below-zero days. Toronto harbor froze over this winter; a sailor told me that he sailed all winter long in 1972 or 1973, I forget which. It snowed today – which is unusual. Yeah, I know it’s just weather, but claims of extreme overall warmth don’t make sense for this locale anyway.

Here’s an interesting article for those of us who believe that nature sometimes oscillates. I had forgotten about the Warm Pool Oscillation, which is one of those that has emerged from the data only in recent years.

Seal pup mortality is a problem even in California where there is no ice. Storms can (and often do) wipe out entire populations of pups on some beaches and sweep them out to sea. Looking at a plot of Jan,Feb, Mar average temps in the US from 1990 to 2007, there appears to be a downtrend and 2007 was colder than 2006.

John A.: Can’t you set up the caching so that pages are regenerated whenever a new comment is submitted rather than doing it at some set time interval? That would eliminate the annoying divide between what shows up in the recent comments in the sidebar and what you actually get when you click on a topic without putting a huge load on the DB server.

#49
Curt,
Two comments: 1]Since its change in editor-in-chief about a year ago, a good number of readers have observed that the Economist has unfortunately lost a good bit of the factual approach and analytical rigour that were its hallmarks for decades. As evidenced by several articles, its science editor since the mid-1990s, has convinced his editorial board to espouse “prima facia” the IPCC’s view of AGW. Thus the type of articles you refer to above. 2] I can report from the other side of the North American continent [British Columbia, Canada], that by all available accounts [day-to-day living and best current stats], we have just come through a rigorous winter, with below seasonal temperatures along the West Coast and record precipitation and snow coverage from Alaska down to California. In BC, this is the third similar winter in a row.

John A.: Can’t you set up the caching so that pages are regenerated whenever a new comment is submitted rather than doing it at some set time interval?

Actually that was part of the problem. We get so many hits that if I allowed the system to update every time a comment was posted, the server would fall over – which is why we have caching in the first place. I don’t have the money to upgrade the server to 2GB of RAM (I’m still waiting for that mythical Exxon check) so the 15 minute delay is an economic as well as performance compromise.

My suggestion would be to use the RSS Comment feed if you want to stay up to date.

#40,
Nordic,
Speaking of the PDO, the PDO was mostly in a negative phase from 1940 through 1974. El Nino events were weak and spread out. During this period, a lot of returning GIs flocked to Southern California. The exodus to Southern California occured when much of the Desert Southwest had a somewhat “cooler”, wetter climate than what is normal. From the early 80s onward, the Desert Southwest has gotten drier and hotter mainly due to the PDO going into a sustained warm phase. Since 1976, El Nino events have driven much of thier climate. I think many people assumed the 35 year wet cool period was normal. THe Desert Southwest is after all a desert -and it is very difficult to sustain a modern population of 30 million in a desert.

I think many enviormentalists ignore this fact. Unless, you believe the PDO is driven by GHG, there isn’t much people can do in the Desert Southwest other than moving away from it.

that’s interesting – I had a feeling that it has changed significantly. First of all, some of the key facts – about the ice core lag etc. – were not mentioned. Second, the criticism of the hockey stick would look pretty different today and the mathematical subtleties of the statistical analysis – and M&M plus its echoes – would certainly play a role. They should have been there already in 2004.

Also, dramatic pictures and music would be added to compete with various other documentaries. To summarize, I think that the Global Swindle, albeit not perfect, is much better a piece of work. Of course that the climate science is stagnating to a large extent – that’s in fact the very desire of the debate-is-over people. But I would recognize it’s not a 2007 documentary.

What I meant when I posted that I didn’t think much had changed in the intervening time was in regard to the MSM and how they present the science of AGW as being settled. Where was the coverage of the whole HS debacle in the MSM? As DaleC has said on the Hughes Australian ABC interview, the NAS Panel report and the subsequent Congressional testimony by North and Cicerone was pretty damining of the whole affair yet this receive dlittle if any significant coverage in the MSM. IMO as a consequence the Hockey Team (Briffa and Osbourne, hergerl, Wahl and Ammann etc) continue to ‘repeat the lie’ in the knowledge that if the MSM continue to support it, it will become established fact. There’s hardly a week goes by when I dont still get to see the Hockey Stick plaster on some outlet of the MSM despite all of Steve and Ross’s hard work. This is not right. Just recently in the UK I had to suffer listening to David Milliband talking about it during a TV interview as if it where still valid. As we all know on this blog, the HS is a contrived piece of propaganda and propaganda of the worst kind at that.

I have seen the Channel 4 Global warming Swindle several times now. I personally think the Doomsday called off documentary was better. Sallie Balliunas and John Christy came across particularly well to me as reasonable, sincere and honest people albeit somewhat untidy in Sallie’s case. I was less convinced by Nils-Axel Morner and ‘the skull and the tree’. It must be a hard life when you have to travel to the Maldives to help present a documentary on global warming.

First I’d like to apologize for the cranky tone of my post #10. I was feeling grumpy.

#12: If there are 20 empirical demonstrations that climate sensitivity is below .3deg/wm^2, then great–name them. One problem though I think is that there are few demonstrations for sensitivity of long-term effects. Solar radiation varies strongly over the course of the year, for example, but this may not tell us very much about the effects of one warmer year after another.

#13: First of all, CO2 certainly does have *something* to do with temperature! My point is just that if you’re going to use the sun as the primary driver of climate, you need a model at least as complex as the agw models–so, where is the evidence that I should pick a solar model (and I don’t think there actually are any yet!) over a gg model? In other words, if warming is “petering out”, why is that evidence against a gg model, but in _favor_ of a solar model?

(Besides, warming has “petered out” more than once over the last 30 years–the first time during the early 80s, the second time during the early 90s. Both times it just eventually grew warmer anyway. I’m not saying we therefore know it will get warmer again, but it doesn’t look like “petering out” is good enough evidence to doubt agw just yet.

#20: Very interesting. What’s your rough estimate of the climate sensitivity? (Or, how much warmer do you think the average global temperature will grow over the next x decades?) And yes, you are certainly correct! :) Even in a warming world, climate will still fluctuate.

There certainly could be a natural (i.e. non-man-made) warming contributing to the last thirty years. Several recent studies have suggested that the solar contribution IIRC could be as high as 50%, though more likely around 20-40%. None that I have seen, however, conclude that solar warming is the primary driver of recent climate (i.e. responsible for >50% of current temperatures).

Nothing wrong with poking fun at the media, of course :) Even though I think most skeptics are wrong about global warming, they still serve a useful purpose by deflating the more dubious claims of their opponents.

#26: I assume Abdusamatov is talking about the Suess cycle? IIRC (I looked into some of this stuff, but it was a while ago) it’s not enough to explain current warming. There’s another he could be talking about, I guess, but these cycles…it’s hard to say, but my impression is that there’s a lot of debate about them. Some of them, everyone agrees on (The sunspot cycle, the Suess cycle, orbital cycles, etc). Others, well–one researcher thinks he sees them, another thinks he doesn’t, so…it’s an area where we need to see really excellent, consistent research that supports it, and from what I can tell “some guy in Russia said so” just doesn’t quite meet the bill. Now, I’m not saying that there couldn’t be some solar cycle we haven’t detected yet that might switch modes so to speak and start to add a cooling influence in the future. But why should I believe “It’ll happen 50 years from now” without good evidence?

Of course I welcome further research, but until we get convincing results, it’s just one more hypothesis among many thousands.

#12: If there are 20 empirical demonstrations that climate sensitivity is below .3deg/wm^2, then great’€”name them. One problem though I think is that there are few demonstrations for sensitivity of long-term effects. Solar radiation varies strongly over the course of the year, for example, but this may not tell us very much about the effects of one warmer year after another.

I don’t know about 20, but there are 10 here … you can start with those. I’d be very interested in your comments, as usually when I refer people to this paper, it is followed by a long silence …

Re #66 mzed, if I was forced to guess about the causes of the warming of the last 30 years, I would say it’s driven in part by CO2 and in part by natural oscillations and maybe in part by solar-related phenomena (or maybe not). I have no clue as to what proportion to assign to each contributor.

However, I would guess that natural oscillation(s) were dominant, because the atmosphere’s temperature jumped, which is not what I’d expect from CO2. As evidence, I offer this plot (200mb geopotential height of the globe) which basically shows that the atmosphere suddenly expanded (warmed) in 1976 and again about 2000. Surface temperatures followed the atmospheric trend.

If the jumps were caused by CO2, I’d like to hear the mechanism.

My argument in all of this is not with the idea of AGW or with developing alternate energy sources, it’s with scare-mongering and sloppy science.

Just noticed on the news that the Eastern US peach and strawberry crops are in danger of being lost in some areas due to record low temps for this late in the season. Yeah, I know that it is weather … but the idea struck me that a peach tree might not produce a single fruit because of late frost yet if the conditions are right later in the year, might produce a record wide tree ring.

#67
Mzed,
You are correct; there isn’t anyone who claims that the only mechanism related to climate change is sloar activity; however, it isn’t the “skeptics” who claim to have found the Rosetta Stone of climate change.

A number of climate indicators were noted to have changed in 1976, especially around the Pacific Basin. Prior to 1976, El Nino and La Nina occurred with about equal frequency, each at intervals of about 3-7 years. Since 1976, there have been 9 El Ninos (using a 6-month average of the Southern Oscillation Index of -0.50 as the criteria), or one every 2.2 years. There has been just one moderate La Nina in that interval (1988-89) and a rather weak La Nina (not even counted by some) in 1996-97. Longer perspectives, since 1860, indicate that the 1976-1997 period is quite unlike any other in the record. This is a source of considerable puzzlement at this time.

Some warming of the Pacific could have caused the ocean to hold less CO2 meaning more of it is in the atmosphere. Not sure what went on in 2000, but 1976 was a year that a lot of things changed and I am not sure they have been completely explained. I believe 2000 was near a solar maximum.

Val La Marche, mentioned in the Hughes interview, was a pioneer in the study of frost rings. I wonder what he would have thought of a colleague manufacturing data from 1400-1404 so that a certain 1404+ chronology would be not be overlooked by a data-crunching algorithm? I bet he would have been horrified.

On April 12, I will be attending a Great Decisions lecture and discussion on climate change. The speaker will be Donald J. Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a recent speech “Facing the Realities of Human-Induced Climate Change”, Dr. Wuebbles talked about the near unanimity in the science community that global warming is primarily being caused by humans. According to an article about the speech, Wuebbles was responsible for much of the research presented in Al Gore’s documentary and book, An Inconvenient Truth, though I haven’t found any evidence of that yet.

I’m doing my homework to get ready for this discussion. I’m planning to wear the State of Fear T-shirt I found on Ebay. On the front it reads, “I’m Living in a State of Fear!” It should be a very interesting evening.

“How much are human practices contributing to substantial and irreversible changes to the environment? What effect are changes to the climate having in different areas of the planet? What response can the international community adopt to lessen the impact of dramatic climate change?”

Don Wuebbles, executive director of the School of Earth, Society and Environment at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign, visited Columbia to lead the panel discussion “Facing the Realities of Human-Induced Climate Change.” He spoke to students and faculty who nearly packed the Ferguson Auditorium in the Alexandroff Campus Center, 600 S. Michigan Ave., on March 1.

Wuebbles started the discussion by talking about the near unanimity in the science community that global warming is primarily being caused by humans. Wuebbles was responsible for much of the research presented in Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Academy Award for best documentary, on Feb. 25.

“The biggest culprit, the only one that matches up, is what we’re doing to the atmosphere,” said Wuebbles, who is a leading author of global and Midwest assessments on the effects of greenhouse gases.

Wuebbles said that there won’t be many more changes in this lifetime, but if nothing is done, Illinois could have summers similar to those in eastern Texas with 120-degree temperatures. The rise in temperatures could cause severe weather and droughts that would adversely impact the economy of Illinois, which is largely driven by agriculture.

“The cost of not doing something about climate change is going to be much higher than doing something about climate change,” Wuebbles said.

I noticed a sudden deterioration in standards at The Economist in the late 80’s. They had decided to go mass market in the U.S around that time and I believe there was a change at the helm. I still read it occasionally but dropped my subscription years ago.

Back to the future, I wonder where they get this claim about minimum temps and climate change at the poles:

“But many of the ill effects hinge on changes in the minimum temperature, which has been rising twice as fast. This trend is particularly strong near the poles, where the climate is changing fastest. Winters no longer get cold enough in many places to kill off different pests and diseases.”

Weather note: snow and sleet are occurring down to the US Gulf Coast this evening (8 April) in what is an unprecedented event for April. One area between Houston and Dallas reported two inches of snow in the last several hours.

Snow/sleet near the Gulf Coast is rare, occurring once ten or fifteen years, and never in April.

Temperatures are within a few degrees of all-time lows for the month of April.

I am nearing 50 years old. I remember (vaguely) my grandfather telling me of a spring that had been very warm and the sap had risen in the trees and the blossoms had “popped” when a severe cold snap set it causing the sap to freeze. He said you could hear trees splitting open and sometimes they would boom like cannon. Now I am not sure if he actually experienced this or if it was told to him by an elder, but the temperature reports I am hearing from that same region (mid-Atlantic … MD, VA, PA, DE) reminded me of that story. I notice temperatures in the 20’s tonight in that region and temps to be even lower tomorrow night. 100 years ago temperatures this low this late in the season would have been a disaster. I am thinking fruit tree crops in this region are probably lost and possibly early corn and maybe other field crops.

Hello there, and thanks for the event notice with all the links and details!
As to your query, Schneider, Hansen, and Weubbles are among the True Believers in anthropocentic climate warming alarmism – except for when Schneider was a global cooling alarmist in the 1970s!

What would be a good comment or question?

I would cite the satellite temp record of the past nearly 30 years. (For chart, please see Unthreaded #7- people, please correct me here if I’m wrong (I have a week WWW link at the moment)! It shows virtually flat Southern Hemisphere temps, and slight Northern Hemisphere temp rise since 1990. I would ask, since C02 is a well mixed gas, why is there a temperature divergence between hemispheres in our best data set?

Now, for specialists, there are a number of possible responses. But I expect Wuebbles, since he’s in administration now – ie, PR mongering for money – will take the easiest way out and say this: “there used to be a debate about the satellite temps versus ground data, but that recent corrections have resolved this matter and now favor man-made global warming.”

Notice: this isn’t really a direct response! But it is a very adequate political one, resting on a dodge and ongoing debate in science: are the satellite data corrections two-thirds closer to ground data? Or as NASA’s Roy Spencer and John Christy maintain, closer to only one-third?

But maybe someone wants to wiegh in with a Hockey Stick question – there could be several! – since it plays such a large role in Al Gore’s movie and book, as well as in IPCC FAR?

Oh, here’s a stab: “Since the Hockey Stick shaped temperature graph – showing graph temperature shooting up in recent decades compared with the last 1,000 years – plays such a prominant role in IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), and in the current Fourth Assessment Report (2007) – have you considered what Dr Gerald Notrh, climatology professor at Texas A&M University who headed last summer’s NAS report, and the Wegman report in August concluded: that it was unreliable temperature history and methodology. Have you revised your opinion? Or it it the same in light of this authoritative contradiction?

( “CHAIRMAN BARTON:Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s [NAS stats chair] report [which conluded that the Hockey stick is unscientific]?’€¨DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.”http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1337#comment-102100(

Well, obviously I’m too tired to frame it well at this hour – Beuler? Beuler? anyone to help us out, please?

you find an article of Lindzen in Newsweek 4/16/07 (future), and a radio program on climate skeptics from a New Zealand radio today (Sunday). It also talks about the hockey stick, claiming that Wegman went well further than MM. ;-)

This is the first paragraph of a leader from April 7 in the The Times:

Facts, not emotion, should inform discussion of climate change. Few scientists or rational politicians doubt that global warming is a serious issue that poses long-term dangers to the planet. The scientific evidence that the world’s climate has changed and that this change is accelerating is convincing. But it is also beyond doubt that the world is in danger of being held captive by powerful lobby groups that have distorted data, made unjustified extrapolations and attempted to stifle debate on one of the most important issues of our time.

On the Consensus Science thread Andre Bijkerk alerted us and provided a link to a paper by E-G Beck “180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis” in the current Energy and Environment (vol.2, 2007).

I am a long-term GG sceptic, believing that fundamental science shows that 0.038% CO2 cannot provide sufficient energy transfer, but even I could hardly believe my eyes, jaw on the floor, when I saw the following screen:

Am I being uncritical, or does not this one paper blow sky-high the entire concept of CO2 driving global warming/climate change/changes of average planetary temperature?

An average 19th.century temperature of 341ppmv, ranging from 440PPMV IN 1820 to LESS THAN 300PPMV in the early 1880s! And so many sources, all broadly in agreement.

Beck has done climatolgy a great service with some good, old-fashioned painstaking science – but why has such relatively easily available data been so long coming to light? Someone has not been doing their homework!

#88. Peter, I am very wary of Beck’s CO2 stuff. I do not endorse every “skeptic” cause. I don’t have time to examine everything under the sun and I don’t want this blog to get involved with this topic.

I have been directly involved by Beck’s study. I translated the 1943 Kreutz paper to show his scrutiny of methods.
The intention of Ernst was merely to show the plethora of data and assess it’s validity
and to challenge the refutal grounds of Callendar and Keeling. Not to discuss carbon cycles or possible causes of spikes.
The motto was that theory should be based on data and not that data should be based on theory.
Respecting Steve wishes we could discuss the details here or here.

Andre, Beck presented the observations of Misra, Kreutz and Dürst as if they were something new, in fact they wertre already known and rejected by Fonselius in 1956.http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=25

Why are you wary of this work by Beck. Given how much time and personal resources you’ve devoted thus far to auditing various dendro studies, isn’t it worth your efforts to audit this study also? The issue of whether or not CO2 follows temperature or temperature follows CO2 is critical to the whole AGW debate much more so than most of the dendro stuff you’ve audited thus far. Given its significance to the whole AGW debate why are you wary of this work?

I think it would be a mis-use of Steve’s valuable time to get involved with the Beck paper at this time. If the consensus-loving media can find any scientific errors in Beck’s work they’ll play it for all it’s worth. If they can’t find anything wrong with the science, they’ll either bury any mention of it, or they’ll attack the person and not the argument.

The dendro posts have been very enlightening as to the state of that particular branch of science, and since it also has policy implications through the reconstructions, I’m glad to see Steve spending time with it. No sense biting off more than you want to try to chew.

Also, hurricane season will soon be upon us and he might like to spend more time on that subject.

The Beck paper isn’t ever likely to affect policy given the motley crew we have running this world. If it ever becomes important to how decisions are made, that would be the time to do it.

Sorry, Steve, didn’t mean to get in your way – this is your site, you have enough on your plate and are right to be as selective as you like about what you get involved in.

I think the fast response of CO2 to influences shown even by Mauna Loa data does not tie in with the alleged long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere and therein is a fundamental weakness in the GG argument – but will pursue this interest elsewhere!

Hello there, and thanks for the event notice with all the links and details!
As to your query, Schneider, Hansen, and Wuebbles are among the True Believers in anthropocentric climate warming alarmism – except for when Schneider was a global cooling alarmist in the 1970s!….

And Kahlessa, please report back here sometime.

Thank you so very much! I’ll certainly give a full account. I do know that many people in the organization hosting the event are very skeptical. I’m the newsletter editor of the organization and I seem to have the respect of a good number of the members. I wonder if Dr. Wuebbles thinks he’s just going expound on the “imminent catastrophe” and expect the discussion to be where we all wring our hands and try to figure out how to atone for what we’ve done to the earth. Well, we’ll just see about that.

I am also unconvinced by the Beck curve. However, I will say in passing that if I were going to establish an observatory for carbon dioxide, then I wouldn’t put it on the flanks of an active volcano, near from a large number of volcanic vents.

I am also bemused by the fact that they chose to sight this CO2 observatory so close to an active volcano but then occasional trips to Hawaii isn’t an unpleasant experience I suppose?

Why are you also unconvinced by the Beck curve? Pray tell? What are the problems in auditing this paper? Why are they any more onerous than those that Steve has had to put up from the dendro community?

If I were going to establish a CO2 observatory then Hawaii is nice but I would have put it well away from the Big Island – probably Kauai’s Na Pali coast which is unpopulated and isolated and where the prevailing winds are from the northeast (from the sea). Or on one of the unpopulated islands in the Pacific like Palmyra or Jarvis Island.

I’m not convinced by the Beck curve because there’s too much supposition in it that all measurements are equally accurate or valid. Unless there are measurements taken around the world, I find it difficult to believe that carbon dioxide is that well-mixed in the atmosphere (this applies to the Moana Loa measurements as well).

The answer is: we don’t know how carbon dioxide has varied before 1958. The much larger issue is not the Beck curve but how is atmospheric carbon dioxide measured and how are the data treated?

#99. Kevin, I’m limited in the amount of time that I have and I already have dozens of unfinished topics. So I’m not going to spend the time right now to wade through CO2 measurement issues and see what the problems are. Please take the discussion elsewhere as I do not wish this board to get involved in this discussion, as I’ve said before.

As to the volcano issue, John A, I think that your point is merely a debating point as eruptions would simply cause spikes that would be readily noticed. From the data, it doesn’t look like any such spikes are material. Again, I don’t want to discuss the issue here.

Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn’t account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record’€”an effort that is now generally discredited.

RE: #60 – You have described classic strong negative PDO conditions. Snow cover only good down to about Susanville, CA. South of that latitude, lacking. We had a very cold and dry winter further south. Again, classic strong negative PDO …

#109, 110. April in Toronto has been very cold – we’ve had snow, very unusual in April, and multiple cold days with light snow (it hasn’t stayed). For comparison, they showed pictures of the first Blue Jays’ game back in 1977 (the now famous winter of 1976-77) when there was light snow in the outfield as well.

RE: #111 – 1977 – Right at the end of the last Cold PDO phase … or even, during the transition to Warm … arguably, the “ringing” from the most recent state change from Warm back to Cold phase is still decaying ….

A good pre-McIntyre article here on millenial reconstructions, the MWP, LIA, and problems with Mann’s studies. Does the following sound familiar:

Third, although 12 additional
proxies were added to allow Mann et al. (1999) to reconstruct back to 1000 A.D., as
opposed to 1400 A.D. in Mann et al. (1998), the positive calibration/variance scores
are carried solely by the first principal component (PC #1), which consists of highelevation
tree growth proxy records from Western North America (Mann et al. 1999).
This fact has led Mann et al. (1999) to report that the spatial variance explained by the
distribution of their proxy “networks” in the calibration and verification process is
only 5%, and that it is the time component, not the spatial detail, that is “most
meaningful” for their millennial reconstruction results. (It is then easy to see that
Mann et al’s 1000-year reconstructed Northern-Hemispheric mean temperature’ is
dominated by relative changes in the western North America time series ‘€” compare
Figures 2a and 2b in Mann 2001b). Mann et al. (1999) also specifically emphasized
that their calibration/verification procedure fails if they remove the one crucial
Western North American composite tree ring series from the list of 12 proxies.

RE: #118 – Already, in NoCal, there is growing hysteria based on the recent IPCC statement and media spin. Many here assume that all the redwoods and oaks will perish, to be eventually replaced by saguaro and mesquite. Would hate to have dead oaks and redwoods hanging over one’s $2M home. How much to cut this baby down? Permit?…. you want to see my permit, I ain’t got no permit, I don’t need no stinking permit! (LOL …..)

A ⡲ billion project to answer some of the biggest mysteries of the universe has been delayed by months after scientists building it made basic errors in their mathematical calculations.

The mistakes led to an explosion deep in the tunnel at the Cern particle accelerator complex near Geneva in Switzerland. It lifted a 20-ton magnet off its mountings, filling a tunnel with helium gas and forcing an evacuation.

and

It appears Fermilab made elementary mistakes in the design of the magnets and their anchors that made them insecure once the system was operational.

Last week an apparently furious and embarrassed Pier Oddone, director of Fermilab, wrote to his staff saying they had caused “a pratfall on the world stage”. He said: “We are dumb-founded that we missed some very simple balance of forces. Not only was it missed in the engineering design but also in the four engineering reviews carried out between 1998 and 2002 before launching the construction of the magnets.”

Last week an apparently furious and embarrassed Pier Oddone, director of Fermilab, wrote to his staff saying they had caused “a pratfall on the world stage”. He said: “We are dumb-founded that we missed some very simple balance of forces. Not only was it missed in the engineering design but also in the four engineering reviews carried out between 1998 and 2002 before launching the construction of the magnets.”

Well, so much for getting CLOUD experiment data to verify (or not) Svensmark et. al. any time soon. If only we had built the SSC in Texas instead of that colossal boondoggle otherwise known as the International Space Station. Oh, and we might have found the Higgs boson too.

For any fellow stormheads with an interest in Atlantic hurricane climatology, Jim Kossin has a link to a new paper titled, “The Atlantic Meridional Mode and Hurricane Activity”. This is an in-press (GRL) paper dated 6 March and in draft form, so it’s about as new as it gets.

In a week or so I’ll try to summarize this Kossin paper and an earlier paper by Knaff (1997) , both of which examine the AMO.

During an unprecedented solar eruption last December, researchers at Cornell University confirmed solar radio bursts can have a serious impact on the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other communication technologies using radio waves.

No. Those are the string theoretical physicists who only dirty their hands with chalk. Well, I guess they probably use white boards and fiber tip markers now. The mistake was made by some of the people on the huge teams of experimentalists who will be out of work for a few years more now. Somehow, though, Im sure they’ll blame it on the engineers.

Monbiot is sounding off in the Guardian this morning. He complains bitterly that the ‘deniers’ have censored the IPCC and corporate interests are behind it. It is news to me – I am under the impression that the alarmists have the lion’s share of the media attention to the detriment of any reasonable discussion.
M claims that the IPCC works so hard to achieve concensus that their pronouncements are actually timid…!

The Kerry/Gingrich Global Warming Debate mentioned earlier will be carried by C-SPAN this morning at 10:00 eastern time. It should be available on-line.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
Global Warming Debate
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Fmr. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich debate the government’s role in confronting global warming. The event is sponsored by New York Univ.’s John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress. This is part of the Center’s series on the way Congress makes long-term policy decisions.

I don’t have a lot of hope, Gingrich is pretty “green”. He even voted to make ANWR a wilderness area so that exploration would be
permanently banned. I’m betting it will be more of a debate on how to handle the coming “catastrophe”.

Let’s see. We’re at 130 posts in 5 days. Assuming the average unthreaded was allowed to reach 390 posts we’d have a new Unthreaded twice a month. So in a year we’ll be on Unthreaded #33. In twenty years approximately we’ll be on Untreaded # 666 and the world will come to an end just as the AGW people predict. QED.

133, 134: I think the fact that Newsweek, of all publications, is giving Lindzen some space is a good sign that some media folk are waking up. I don’t see how any reasonable person could listen to the extreme hype from the likes of Al Gore without laughing. The American public is far less gullible than many of the radical leftists think.

And on an entirely different note, here’s a news story that likely won’t make the New York Times or BBC:

With a bit of imagination it could well be a story for the NYT or BBC. These animals are pushed to live on the extreme boundaries of their existence by AGW and then the weather changes (reminding that extreme events are the calling card of AGW) and these poor animals are in trouble. You make the story fit the conclusion and remind those forgetful and not always alert readers of the connections.

RE: #130 – I’m corporate. My peers have largely drunken the Koolaid. We are wasting lots of money on CO2 reduction (or as the case may be, wasted efforts which are well meaning but unlikely to have the intended effect).

Kerry argued about 2/3 “Science tells us the world is ending” and 1/3 “We need a regulatory mandate to get the market to work to fix the problem”

Gingrich mentioned briefly that science is not a voting process, it’s a truth process. He mentioned there is real ‘consensus’ only that we’ve been warming for 400 years and humans have something to do with it. He, more than Kerry, followed the format of the debate b/c he was basically saying, “Let’s assume some of these more aggressive scenarios are true, how can we as public policymakers get India and China on board and actually have the greatest postive impact on the environment ?” He spent almost all of his effort promoting the idea that the market works better by providing carrots, rather than sticks. He made no attempt to respond to Kerry’s use of the Stern report, or the 1000 yr proxy record of tree rings, for example.

Gingrich didn’t even challenge simple economic mischaracterizations made by Kerry like: Solar is better than fossil fuel b/c solar produces 2.5x more jobs. Presumably, that’s one of the reasons solar is less economically viable and that multiplier will undoubtably fall if / when solar achieves price parity. Kerry also mentioned, for example, that Gingrich wants “the government to pay for it” by using incentives but Kerry wants “the market to invest in” the solutions after government sets the standard. Of course, it’s us who pays either way [taxpayers / consumers]. Gingrich said nothing to correct this classic misdirection. Newt appears to be attempting to stop specific legislation. As he said at one point, “The fix is in for carbon cap and trading…” He was on message –> don’t do this through regulation.

RE: #140 – No offense to anyone here who is my age or older …. Gingrich is yet another Baby Boomer who was brainwashed with the Green ecology “e” sign during the 1970s. Ecology man, cooooooool, man, farrrrrrr out, man!

RealClimate has started a topic entitled “Learning from a Simple Model.” It would be interesting if someone were to start a parallel, uncensored thread on the same topic. It might produce some revealing feedback and amplification.

What the world needs is a coal company that sells “pre-mitigated” coal. The way you would do this is purchase old abandoned coal mines and strip-mine sites. You then take paper, pulp it, compress it to near the density of coal and put it back into these old mines. For every ton of carbon you take out in the form of coal, you replace it with a ton of carbon from paper. Simply take all the paper waste from municipal solid waste, pulp it, and bury it. Then you can provide the market with carbon “pre-mitigated” coal that can be burned without the purchase of carbon offsets. Sure, it would cost a little more, but people would feel a lot less guilty burning it.

Besides, coal is useful for creating a wide array if things besides just burning it for heat production. Paper probably isn’t. In this case we are only worried about the carbon itself, so we take out the coal, and replace the carbon with paper. The idea is basically that paper recycling (something the “greens” really love) contributes to atmospheric buildup of CO2. If people stopped recycling paper and sent it to the landfill, tons of carbon would be put back into the ground every day … but that chews up landfill space … so the logical idea is to put it back where the carbon came from. Into the coal mine. So you pull out coal, burn it, put the carbon in the air, plat a tree, turn the carbon into paper, it serves a useful purpose in the economy and when that purpose is done, you put it back into the ground where you got the carbon from to begin with.

Next week I will talk about using asbestos mines as the perfect place to dispose of waste asbestos.

For premitigation, the Canadain government attempted to meet its Kyoto target by argueing that the natural gas that it sold to the US was cleaner than the coal it offset and so the putative difference should be counted. This would be a form of negative matter that was previously unknown to science.

burying paper could mitigate the burning of gasoline. You could design an engine to run on compressed paper, but I would want to be
the guy assigned to refueling it. (Think Stanley Steamers. I don’t mean the carpet cleaning guys.)

On doing some background reading with regards to crop models and the effects of climate variables on crop yields, I have come to appreciate just how complicated these relationships can be. With soybeans and corn, they talk about 6 major divisions in the annual growing season and each with its own model of growth (yields). They discuss issues such as minimum, maximum and mean temperatures in these processes and the interaction of temperature with moisture variables. Some models also include the separate and interactive effects of solar radiation. They also consider secondary effects such as the effect of temperature on plant stresses based on what those temperatures to which the plants have previously been exposed and allowed to adjust. Some of what I have read comes from here, here and here and include the deterministic models called CROPGRO and CERES-Maize.

I see recent papers such as Lobell and Field, (2006), attempting to single out temperature and specifically increasing temperatures as having a significant and detrimental effect on crop yields. I find these papers, much as some here at this blog have found papers by dendroclimatologists and dendrochronologists, tending to over simplify the underlying plant phenology when relating it to temperature effects and to be getting out ahead of the better understanding of plant physiology that appears required.

My question coming out of this is: Are there large numbers tree phenologists and physiologists (or whatever they are called) who are working and publishing papers in attempts to better understand the basic sciences or are most of the efforts in the direction implied from posts at this blog, i.e. the race to publish more temperature proxies and chronologies?

You are far more of an optimist than me. I see CEOs, and other mucketymucks, embracing “Green thought.”

A lot of that is for PC/PR and $$$ reasons. Gotta cash in.

True. And there is also a lot to be said for side-stepping a frenzy. Given the ongoing incessent propaganda there is a significant risk that a victim or two will be thrown down some figurative volcanos to appease the earth gods. Note that Al Gore and others are already happily being fitted for a hollywood parody of a polynesian headdress. CEOs are politically astute enough to recognize the risk. In short, if one can’t do the backstroke in lava it pays to find a way to blend in with the mob.

CEOs are paid for several reasons and perhaps the biggest one is keeping their firms out of trouble. They see the positive feedback loop in the present propaganda and they know enough about the madness of crowds to respect the danger to their firms when they see it.

No offense to anyone here who is my age or older …. Gingrich is yet another Baby Boomer who was brainwashed with the Green ecology “e” sign during the 1970s. Ecology man, cooooooool, man, farrrrrrr out, man!

So you’re offending those here who are younger and think ecology is cooool? BTW, that’s “kewl” to us.

I just read news of a new study showing temperate forrestation creates more CO2, does not act as a sink.

Prediction: in two weeks max the “news” will report studies from Canada, New Zealand and Sweden refuting that finding.

Considering the size of China’s coal reserves, I think this falls under the category of shipping coal to Newcastle (pre-Thatcher anyway).

Uhm, maybe not.

China Shenhua Energy will start to import coal from Indonesia and Australia to southern China, the South China Morning Post reported. The import plan, announced by Shenhua Chairman Chen Biting, is seen as a response to domestic coal prices becoming more competitive than international prices. Chen said that shipping coal from overseas costs far less than moving it south from the northern coal-producing regions of China. He stressed that this move would not affect Shenhua’s export volume, which came to 23.9 million metric tons out of total sales of 171 million metric tons last year. Beijing has pushed to keep domestic sales high by abolishing the 8% rebate on value-added tax collected on imports and imposing a 5% export tax. Coal import duty has gone from 3-6% to zero. China’s coal exports fell to 63.3 million metric tons last year from 94 million metric tons in 2003 and the country became a net coal importer for the first time in at least five years during the first two months of 2007.

RE: #154 – True enough. But beyond all that, a significant percentage of execs are actually “true believers” in the Church of the Goracle. Just to allude to some possible sociological proxies, LOL, it might be interesting to do the following research. Attendance at “fundamentalist” Churches by middle income people versus execs. And also the following additional one – membership rates in environmentalist interest groups by execs vs middle income. I think we probably all know the likely outcomes, but the numbers would be interesting. I digress …. ;)

That Zakaria article is all over the place. But at least he is thinking…but talking about what Cheney thinks or says is near irrelevant.

Along the way, industrial societies will earn tax revenues that they can use, in part, to subsidize clean energy for the developing world. It is the only way to solve the problem at a global level, which is the only level at which the solution is meaningful.

Why just “in part?” He seems earnest, yet is he in on the “green taxes scam”, or recognizes politicians must be paid off to do good?

Congress is currently considering a variety of proposals that address this issue. Most are a smorgasbord of caps, credits and regulations. Instead of imposing a simple carbon tax that would send a clear signal to the markets, Congress wants to create a set of hidden taxes through a “cap and trade” system.

Spot on. But it’s worse – the “taxes” don’t go anywhere near the solution, and the brokerages take a big chunk of the action for profit.

“The Europeans have adopted a similar system, which is unwieldy and prone to gaming and cheating. (It is also unsustainable if Brazil, China and India don’t come onboard soon.)”

It’s unsustainable, eventually, whoever joins it. The Euros are just delaying the final crash with hopes of coopting suckers in America.

“A carbon tax would also send the market a clear and powerful signal to develop alternative energies.”

No it wouldn’t. And isn’t the point of the article to clean up coal?

Daniel Esty, a Yale environmental expert whose new book, “Green to Gold,” is a blueprint for new thinking about the environment, argues that the only way forward is a “transformational approach that creates incentives for innovation and alternative energy. The way we think about these issues is old-fashioned. We’re still trying to limit, regulate, control and inspect.

It’s not complicated – the government needs to spend money on the technologies. The “market” doesn’t want them.

“”We need to become much more market-friendly. Put in place a few simple rules, and let the market come up with hundreds of solutions. We’re not even 10 percent of the way down such a path.””

The problem with “market solutions” is that reasoning is the very stuff fueling the cap and trade scams.

In the end, everyone realizes that innovation is the only real solution to the global-warming problem. And that’s where Cheney is right. Conservation and energy efficiency are smart policies, but not enough. In America over the last three decades, almost all machines and appliances we use to power our lives have become significantly more efficient (with the exception of cars). And yet we consume three times as much energy as we did 30 years ago. Why?

Because rising living standards mean rising energy use. We can slow down the growth, but some increase is inevitable. We have more efficient air conditioners. But now we air-condition our whole houses. Our bed lamps conserve power. But we also plug in two phones, a BlackBerry and three iPods.

And yet the Bush administration’s record on energy and the environment is shameful. While they may have the right critique of Kyoto, they have used it as an excuse to do nothing, surrendered energy policy to special interests, subsidized polluters and killed or watered down every measure that would spur innovation or create a new energy framework for the future. They have been weak leaders, bad policymakers and poor stewards of the world we live in. That’s not a sign of “personal virtue,” it is personal and public vice.

RE: #155 – As a tweaner not quite “born in the 50s” (but a bit after), I can go either way … LOL. There are many things I still like about the 1970ish hard core enviro roots. But, age and experience have taught me there is much there which is illogical. So, I pick and choose.

#159, I think you would find it hard to separate which CEOs are members of env. orgs for personal reasons and which ones are there to boost the image of their corporation. Ken Lay was a big philanthropist around Houston, and as a result, Houston’s press was the last to buy into the idea that Enron might have been doing something wrong (not that Houston’s major newspaper is worth a flip anyways…). I think what was being said in #154 is that it is obvious from the Greenpeace vs Apple fight that there is a mob out there lighting torches and growing restless and in such cases, it is a good idea to put away the pointy black hat and the broomstick and light a torch yourself, lest you be accused of witchcraft. Companies and their senior leadership give political contributions to politicians who they may personally despise all the time, because it is part of doing business and protecting the interests of the company. I don’t have any doubt that lots of corporate boards are searching for a way to fly a green flag over their company in some way or another in order to take advantage of the prevailing atmosphere.

The reason corp CEOs will jump on the ‘green’ bandwagon is that it’s good for business – but only if the government regulates it. The tagline you’ll most often hear is “a level playing field.” Small business almost invariably complains about getting government off its back; corporations are often fine with taxes, fees, and rules as long as they apply to everyone. This is because, as long as they apply to everyone, the corps can simply pass the costs along to their customers with an additional markup.

Regulation is inherently anti-consumer because it forces customers to pay for things they don’t want or have nothing to do with. Corps are generally unaffected. The alternative is to let business do what it wants but punish actual bad behavior. Why not actually allow Exxon to go bankrupt paying for their misdeeds if they have an oil spill ? Absent regulation, if only ‘bad’ companies pay fines, they have to pay for those losses out of retained earnings.

The answer to improving our energy use / utilization is not to punish petro- nor favor alternatives. The solution is simply to stop subsidizing oil. Then the free market will work. Oil is a commodity with highly variable price. Businesses hate unpredictable costs. One reason we use so much oil is both parties have pursued this middle east and other expensive policies for decades with the explicit goal of promoting STABLE oil prices [no, not cheap oil, stable prices].

Get out of the oil subsidy business and allow the price to jump up and down and I guarantee businesses will start structuring their operations to minimize exposure. The market works, if government will stop meddling.

Amid the alarmism, some thoughtful, reasoned comments from Professor Bob Carter in the Telegraph today:

…”In the present state of knowledge, no scientist can justify the statement: “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due [90 per cent probable] to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations,” as stated in the 2007 SPM.”… More:

He has a lot to say about the media and dubious behaviour in general, ending with a summary of scientific objections/uncertainties.
As a curio for readers here, it includes a (credited) chart by Willis E.

Much of the anger of consumers and industries has been aimed at the continent’s utility companies. Like other firms, the utilities were given slightly fewer allowances than they needed. But instead of charging customers for the cost of buying allowances to cover the shortfall, utilities in much of Europe charged customers for 100 percent of the tradable allowances they were given — even though the government handed them out free. Electricity rates soared.
The chief executive of one utility, Vattenfall, which owns a coal plant that is one of the continent’s biggest carbon emitters, defended the decision. Lars G. Josefsson, who is also an adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said higher electricity prices are “the intent of the whole exercise. . . . If there were no effects, why should you have a cap-and-trade system?”

John A writes: I edited this for formatting and paragraphs to make it more readable. Not a single word has been altered

Apart from the political debate as old layman (born 1938) I am very glad to learn many scientific things on this site. So here is a couple of questions to physicists, because weather is not climate but which interests us is climate in the lowest troposphere where wheather is for it a kind of proxy.

I have been troubled by an account in Wegman report on HS where they consider, as a consensus for everybody in the Team and outside, that heavy isotopes ice contents are proxies for polar zones climates.

They say:

“Ice cores are the accumulation of snow and ice over many years that have recrystallized and have trapped air bubbles from previous time periods. The composition of these ice cores, especially the presence of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, provides a picture of the climate at the time. The relative concentrations of the heavier isotopes in the condensate indicate the temperature of condensation, allowing for ice cores to be used in global temperature reconstruction.”

If this is true, since the “saturated vapor pressure” of heavy water is a little less than that of normal water, then snow and ice condensed during a lower temp period should contain more D or 18O. But it is not what happens, it is strictly the inverse situation which is observed, there is less heavy isotopes in ice of colder periods.

For me, to get the right situation we must consider the first phase transition, in the evaporation zones (mainly oceans) where higher temps (SST) leads to higher contents of heavy isotopes in vapor > clouds > snow > polar ice. This is assessed by transient deficit in these same isotopes in sea surface water from where foraminifers get part of their O for calcareous tests (CaCO3) and organic maters, the other part coming from dissolved CO2. These tests and organic maters constitute sediments proxies which series have well been dealt with SST in the Sargasso sea you discussed here last November (Lloyd D Keigwin, Science 274, 1996). In these sediments, less heavy isotopes is related to higher temperature (SST). And if the abundance (number of cell-test) is counted (G. bulloides), as it should be related to dissolved CO2, it should be higher with cool temps, but with perhaps a time lag for dissolution to occur.

Am I completely wrong when I say that “The relative concentrations of the heavier isotopes in the condensate phase indicate the temperature of vaporisation” in the zones where this happens?

If I am right then ice core proxies supported by sediment cores, are proxies for SST and not for polar zones climates, no need for TR to get false closer sight to global temperatures.

Another puzzling question is the denomination of gas with “greenhouse effect” like CO2 and CH4. Such a term should at least describe what happens in a greenhouse. A physicist of my University School talk me some years ago, that in a greenhouse, the active component is the transparent ceiling and walls which are made of glass that has a high “heat capacity” that is to say it “absorbs” much energy to get one °C up than materials (such as plastics). The much the energy is retained in the glass, the better is the greenhouse effect. The formula is : dt = M*Cp*dT (M=mass “specific mass*volume” ; Cp=heat capacity at constant pressure for solids, Cv for gasses at constant vol ; dT=temperature variation)

In a heat flux, the higher Cp or v, the much greenhouse effect we have. The flux in a greenhouse comes from soil as much by IR as by convection, the ceiling inside is cooler with glass than with plastics. The cooler it is, the better is greenhouse effect, the hotter is inside the greenhouse.
In our earth system, the homologous active part of the transparent ceiling seems to be our atmosphere (99,9% O2+N2) with high M and Cv relatively to Water vapor, CO2, CH4 …

These later gases which warm a little the “ceiling” should be better named “anti-glasshouse effect” substances. Don’t they?

I have read in La Recherche, a French review that for #170 W/m2 dissipated from earth surface toward space, 65 W/m2 are radiated (IR), 65 W/m2 contribute to warm atmosphere by convection and the remaining 40 W transform liquid water to vapour and are restituted to the atmosphere with condensation. Are these proportions complete fantasy?

In the same paper (Lambert LR, 18, 189, p778) a chart shows large seasonally variations in CO2 (years 1980, 81, 82, 83, more than 20ppmv, max in winter) in Northern hemisphere not in Southern one. The original work is attributed to : RH Gammon et al., CO2, DOE/ER, 1985. The alleged cause are boreal forest activity and to a lesser extend ocean temperature variation effects on phytoplankton production. To my knowledge no boreal forest 3000 km around the pole, where max variation is. Does anyone know this work and which confidence can be given to global measures of CO2 around the world?

If I am completely wrong and mis-reasoning because of my layman understanding of physics and maths, I’d be very glad of any light from physicists.

Many thanks to all of you, here in France, truth is walking slowly but it walks.

As to the truth “walking in France”, I’d say its walks, but on its head. In Europe in general, we have “moved on”, scientists have spoken, the AGW science is settled, now it’s up to politicians to sermon the world and to invent new regulations.

P.S. For another climate websites, don’t forget to consult climat-sceptique.com of Charles Muller.

I have been saying for years that we need to be spending more on our roads and bridges. (New and maintenance)
Raising gas taxes to pay for that would pass muster with me.

There are many reasons for us to be in the Gulf, oil is just one of them. If there were no oil in the Gulf, we wouldn’t be there, that’s
true. But it would be because the bad guys in the Gulf wouldn’t have the resources to cause problems, so could be ignored.

#170 etc. On this “Unthreaded” thread, I don’t interfere much and it keeps the more political comments off the other threads. I just want to re-iterate my own position briefly: if I had a big policy job, I would be guided by the views of official institutions like IPCC rather than fringe dissident groups; also business people make decisions all the time without perfect certainty and I have no problem with politicians making decisions based on best available information. However, I strongly disagree that service towards a “big picture” policy objective is a relevant metric for scientific validity. My own interests are in the scientific issues. In the proxy area anyway, it is untrue that the “scientific debate is over”. Or if it is “over”, it is not because the scientific work is of impeachable calibre, but because the field is relatively small and of one mindset.

April in Toronto has been very cold – we’ve had snow, very unusual in April, and multiple cold days with light snow (it hasn’t stayed).

Using the Pearson (GTAA?) data set the first ten days of April 2007 were the 11th coldest first ten days of April since
the record started in 1938. Coldest to warmest were; 1972, 1975, 1982, 2003, 1996, 1939, 1943, 1938, 1995, 1979 and 2007.

If you assume the Weather Network’s forecast up to the 15th is reasonably correct then the first half of April 2007 will become the 5th coldest first half of April in the record.

Or rather the uncorrected record. Comparison of the Pearson, Island Airport and Mount Bridges temperature records suggest that between 1980 and 2006 Pearson’s temperature records for April have been biased upwards about 0.9°C. This is probably the result of the massive airport development heat island effect.

Assuming you could correct for this bias using this +0.9°, the first ten days of April 2007 would become the 4th coldest first ten days of April in the record.

Just for contrast, the warmest first ten days of April were in 1981.

April is on the cusp between winter and summer anything can (and does) happen. Apparently we may be getting a burst of summer like weather towards the end of the month.

The partial pressure of CO2 has increased. Does this not imply an increased amount of CO2 in the ocean? I thought the oceans were a sink, not a source, of atmospheric CO2. Perhaps some basic thermodynamics would not be so bad, indeed.

Yes indeed, it has increased, though the partial pressure is pretty low to begin with. Temperature has also increased. The ocean is also dynamic in that it circulates, i.e. it dredges up stored carbon from the ocean floor. As a whole, the ocean is a sink, though simply viewing it that way is rather disingenuous as it constantly transfers both ways (hence your astute thermodynamics comment). Whether it is absorbing less or releasing more CO2 due to warming is indistinguishable, and simple surface observations won’t tell the whole story.

There have been a few posts from folks that understand the actual relationships better than most (include me in the “most”), though I do not recall where (too lazy to search right now).

Those are strong month-to-month swings. In some systems such strong swings signal a mode shift – maybe we are about to experience a climate oscillation (warmer or cooler) and leave the flatline global temperature pattern of the last six years.

RE: #172 – As I’ve noted before, my observation has been that Peak Oilers seem to be, if not a coincident set, certainly an intersecting set, with Malthusians/Erlichians. The story is always the same – in affront to the actual reality of a pending population flattening and subsequent inception of Euro like negative trend, world wide (depending on who you believe, either as soon as next year or as late as 2050), and in spite of the proven, demonstrated effective continuous improvement and ever increasing efficiencies in resource and energy consumption, and, in ignorance of the amazing abundance of crustal prospects – there remains an almost cultish fascination with the notion of population “overshoot” and subsequent “extinction” (or at very least, the mother of all “plagues” / famines) beating humanity back into the Stone Age. Of course, those who favor the death of all development and urbanity, and the return of the reign of the wild beasts and unfettered wilderness across the entire globe, relish such notions. Ah, the return to nobel savagery – Rousseau would beam an ear-to-ear grin.

RE: #180 – like any “digital” signal in fact consisting of a broad frequency spectrum / superposition of myriad analogue oscillation modes, the change from Warm to Cold phase PDO must have produced and still must be producing all sorts of “ringing” on either side of the state change. The same would “ring” true for other oscillations such as ENSO, AMO, etc … etc … etc (BTW – I am indeed tending toward Rama IV like hairlessness at my highest elevations! LOL… )

I caught a short interview with Joe Bastardi yesterday evening. He mentioned that his father was also a meteorologist and that he’d started to forecast during the 1930s. His dad has stated and Joe concurs, that current conditions appear in similar-to-1930s mode, evolving toward similar-to-1940s mode. In light of the past few posts, I find that anecdote interesting. He closed by stating that, like me, he’s actually more concerned about the global impacts of cooling (hello John A!) than he is about global warming.

The global satellite-derived temperature for March is here . This is the UAH product. As expected, the El Nino effect was short-lived and is now gone except for a possible lingering impact in the temperate Northern hemisphere .

The Arctic continued the roughly flat movement of the last five years while the Antarctic continued its flat to slightly colder trend of the last twenty-five years.

“This column from the Toronto Globe and Mail puts the “Peak Oil” issue in perspective:”

That’s a registered site. Can’t read it.

But those who attribute the price rise of recent years to “Peak Oil” are wrong.

A new investing phenomenon transpired in that period – the interest of hedge funds, market funds, pension funds in commodities speculation. Oodles of money have been parked in the commodity markets which drove up the price. There is no precedent for this conduct. Just weeks ago CALPERS, the enormous California public employees pension fund, announced it would be investing in commodities markets. This actually might be a good sign, a sign that the “big boys” – private investors – have created the situation where public funds are parked in the markets, softening their leaving of the same. The “publics” usually are the suckers entering at the end of a bubble.

This new phenomenon effects commodity markets other than oil. The US govt. could bar fund speculation in commodities markets, that would lower the price of oil quickly. But you have two factions against this – the oil side, who have the Republicans in their pocket, and the financial firms and interests, who have the Democrats in their pocket. Here the interests are united in these current markets, opposed to the AAGW/carbon trading where they are opposed, but trying to reconcile some corrupt scheme all can be relatively happy with.

Re #185 “A new investing phenomenon transpired in that period – the interest of hedge funds, market funds, pension funds in commodities speculation. Oodles of money have been parked in the commodity markets which drove up the price.”

I believe this analysis is 100% wrong. It confuses speculation with real demand which is consumption. If speculators buy into oil futures and real demand doesn’t match their hunch they will lose money. In the oil markets nobody has the financial resources to corner the market like Hunt did to the silver market in 1980. And since futures are usually extremely leveraged the loses can be huge. Many hedge funds have lost billions speculating on oil and gas futures.

Speculators can only effect the price of oil for a very short period. The money speculators make comes out of another speculators pocket.

I’ve debated a number of alarmists who declare that when NAS stated that Mann’s claim that the climate is currently warmer than at any
time in the last 1000 years was “plausible”, that the NAS had declared that Mann’s claim was correct. IE, plausible meant
one small step away from proven.

I was wondering if the alarmists would still feel that same way about this use of “plausible”.

It was plausible that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear program. I have a feeling that when you point that out to the type of person who would take this position, you will find that they do not feel the same way about taking radical action to combat a plausible scenario in that case.

Hans Erren says:
April 10th, 2007 at 6:36 am
At most, 5% of the carbon dioxide in the air comes from human sources such as power plants, cars, oilsands, etc.

The author is confusing cash flow and profit. 5% of the annual flow may be antropogenic, but 95% of the net decadal flow is antropogenic. The fossil CO2 accumulates, the biological co2 circulates. It’s a classic straw man.

I’m pretty sure that part of the natural carbon cycle includes sequestering, including via calcium carbonate (sea shells), clathrates, oil, natural gas, and coal. Not an expert in the field, but these processes did not stop happening in the distant past. They still happen today, especially the carbonates as you notice the seashells on the beach. Shells of mollusks, and especially phytoplankton, which die and fall to the deep stay there for millions of years. The ocean is a big place, and this adds up to a tremendous amount of carbon. As I understand it, natural carbon sinks do not play a role in most climate models, despite the massive amounts of CO2 removed thereby. Although burning fossil fuels adds to CO2, so does outgassing from from oceans, volcanoes, and so on. the oceans may be a major source as CO2 solubility goes down as temperature goes up (the warm Coke experiment’). Therefore, and I’m sure I’ll be corrected here, it is not immediately clear where the bulk of the new’ CO2 comes from.
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Mark T. says:
April 10th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
edit

the oceans may be a major source as CO2 solubility goes down as temperature goes up (the warm Coke experiment’). Therefore, and I’m sure I’ll be corrected here, it is not immediately clear where the bulk of the new’ CO2 comes from.

Bernie #48, you and others on here seem to me to want a rigidly polarized debate. It is worth remembering, however, that AGW can be real and not that big a deal at one and the same time and that many of the lower end projections of future temperature change would be consistent with that sort of analysis of the situation. It doesn’t have to be a case of two mutually antagonistic sides constantly saying “it isn’t happening at all” vs. “we are all doomed, doomed I tell you”. Given the limited duration of past interglacials and the length of the current one, there is actually a case that could be be made that having significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere could delay or even eliminate the next ice age and the associated climate change that would make most of North America and Europe uninhabitable and much of the rest of the planet arid desert.

Mann’s hockey stick provided a simplistic visual snapshot that could be spread through the electronic media to convince people with a limited degree of scientific knowledge that drastic action is required. Removing the wavy line aspect in the graphics of past temperature in the earlier ICPP report due to the LIA and MWP no doubt helped silence some potentially awkward questions about natural cycles. Proving Mann’s HS is a propaganda exercise does not make the issue of AGW suddenly go away, however, because it isn’t the key piece of science on which future temperature projections are based. It is worth remembering that many scientists regarded AGW as a serious issue that would require drastic action long before Mann ever reported those data.
73
Sam says:
April 10th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
edit

Isn’t the “Concensus” something mandated every 10 years by the US Constitution to
count the numbers of populations of proxies that support AGW?
74
DeWitt Payne says:
April 10th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
edit

Given the limited duration of past interglacials and the length of the current one, there is actually a case that could be be made that having significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere could delay or even eliminate the next ice age and the associated climate change that would make most of North America and Europe uninhabitable and much of the rest of the planet arid desert.

I think something may be wrong with the Link button.
75
Ken Fritsch says:
April 10th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
edit

Given the limited duration of past interglacials and the length of the current one, there is actually a case that could be be made that having significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere could delay or even eliminate the next ice age and the associated climate change that would make most of North America and Europe uninhabitable and much of the rest of the planet arid desert.

This does not fit the current PC thinking on AGW and you should consider recanting. Please consider the following before broaching this subject again:

For the purposes of proposing mitigations for AGW we limit the appeal to the future of the globe and our coming generations to approximately 50 to 100 years out and do not even want to consider what will happen in 1,000 to 10,000 years out.

If man interferes with the climate and delays the next ice age that is unnatural and that is automatically bad regardless of mans’ selfish interests.

Interference with the climate to correct a man made change is acceptable practice but only to the extent of getting things back to normal.

Choices between polar bears and humans should not automatically be biased towards the latter.
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Pat Frank says:
April 10th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
edit

#62 ‘€” “The fossil CO2 accumulates, the biological co2 circulates.”

Fossil CO2 circulates, too, Hans. Once it’s in the air, plants and cyanobacteria can’t tell the difference. The only question is whether the photosynthetic biomass will catch up to the slowly increasing atmospheric concentration. It’s almost certain the oceans will catch up by way of dissolution chemistry, but the biosphere could potentially adapt much faster. On the other hand, no one really believes a century hence we’ll still be generating most of our energy by burning carbon, do they?
77
Andrey Levin says:
April 11th, 2007 at 12:08 am
edit

”Despite the fact that Fullerton set record high temperatures for the month of March, people still have a hard time believing that global warming is real. The weather patterns are rapidly changing and becoming more extreme all over.

The tsunami in the South Pacific, Hurricane Katrina and the unseasonable heat in late winter and early spring are all signs that the weather is just going to continue changing.

It will change in such a way that this place we call home will no longer be inhabitable by those that helped ruin it.”

Devastating visual images of tsunami are too powerful to be ignored by AGW promoting media. I heard by my own ears that “GW causes tsunamis” on major Canadian CTV news cast. I am actually waiting to hear that
“Al Gore walks on CO2”.

I showed it to my son’s high school friend, and reaction of some was serious concern, but from most of them ‘€” hysterical laugh.
78
gb says:
April 11th, 2007 at 12:16 am
edit

Re # 70,71:

The partial pressure of CO2 has increased. Does this not imply an increased amount of CO2 in the ocean? I thought the oceans were a sink, not a source, of atmospheric CO2. Perhaps some basic thermodynamics would not be so bad, indeed.
79
Diodor says:
April 11th, 2007 at 1:21 am
edit

Due to climate inertia the carbon warming is yet to affect us fully, yet that sunspots peaked around 1990 and the earth is still warming proves solar warming is negligible.
80
MarkW says:
April 11th, 2007 at 5:17 am
edit

Interesting, #79 declares that the earth has inertia to heating caused by CO2, but no inertia to heating caused by the sun.
I might add that the earth’s temperature has been essentially unchanged since 1998, so the claim that heating continues is not borne
out by the facts.

kchua says:
April 12th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
edit

#75

If man interferes with the climate and delays the next ice age that is unnatural and that is automatically bad regardless of mans’ selfish interests.

Unnatural – do you take antibiotics? cook your food? use the internet? watch the television? use the telephone – is not all of this unnatural? This is all automitically bad so you should avoid them all.

Selfish interests – define “selfish” – why live at all?

Interference with the climate to correct a man made change is acceptable practice but only to the extent of getting things back to normal.

What do you mean by “normal”? Explain why your statement is at all valid other than as a purely ideological statement.

Choices between polar bears and humans should not automatically be biased towards the latter.

Why not? If it was between myself (my family, indeed any human being including you) and the polar bear I know which I would choose.

What you are spouting is ideology unsupported by any reason, nothing more and nothing less.

In the cited CO2 ‘science’ article, the Idsos quote the abstract as saying:

“These results clearly suggest, in his words, “that 20th century warming trends are plausibly a continuation of past climate patterns” and, therefore, that “anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th century could plausibly result from natural causes.””

Here, however, is what the abstract actually says:

“These results suggest that 20th Century warming trends are plausibly a continuation of past climate patterns. Results are
not precise enough to solve the attribution problem by partitioning warming into natural versus human-induced components.
However, anywhere from a major portion to all of the warming of the 20th Century could plausibly result from natural causes
according to these results.”
Note that the Idsos leave out (and misrepresent by implication) that middle sentence. Once again, a clearly dishonest bit of quote mining on CO2 Science.’ Loehle repeats the we can’t use these data to attribute’ qualification in the last paragraph of the paper as well – he is making the point very clear, but he Idsos leave it out.

Note also that the data analyzed in the Loehle paper ENDS AT 1900. He intentionally leaves out 20th century data. The 20th century reports are derived from fits of periodic models to the previous data. His study BY DESIGN does not compare temps of the last decade to earlier temps – he doesn’t have that data.

This is an interesting paper, but if it forms the standard to which acceptable papers must rise, then y’all don’t have a lot to criticize anywhere else. And it once again shows – don’t believe a damn thing the Idsos say without checking it out for yourself.

BTW, Loehle makes on important incorrect statement:
“The standard assumption in climate research, in-
cluding the IPCC reports, is that over a century time
interval there is not likely to be any recognizable trend
to global temperatures (Risbey et al., 2000) and thus
the null model for climate signal detection is a flat tem-
perature trend with some autocorrelated noise. Any
warming trends in excess of that expected from normal
climatic variability are then assumed to be due to an-
thropogenic effects. ”
For GCM-based attribution statements, the baseline is NOT a flat signal. It is (to oversimplify a bit) model output in the absense of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas component, compared to output with anthropogenic gasses, compared to actual temperatures..
26
fFreddy says:
April 12th, 2007 at 3:27 am
edit

Re #25, Lee

Note that the Idsos leave out (and misrepresent by implication) that middle sentence.

Stop fantasising. There is no misrepresentation here.

For GCM-based attribution statements, the baseline is NOT a flat signal. It is (to oversimplify a bit) model output in the absense of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas component, compared to …

So what does this “model output in the absense of an anthropogenic greenhouse gas component” look like ?
How much does it differ from a flat signal ?
27
MarkW says:
April 12th, 2007 at 5:07 am
edit

JohnM,

You claim that those “in the know”, know which papers are faulty and don’t cite them, so there is no need to tell the rest of the world.

The problem is that the rest of the world assumes that any paper that is peer reviewed must be good. Then they use these faulty papers
as a basis for their own work. Such as the in the climate change debate.

The result is that your desire to protect your peers from criticism that might hurt their feelings ends up being support for bad policy
based on bad data.

That’s not good. The implications of Kyoto go way beyond the feelings of a handfull of dendroclimatologists.
28
MarkW says:
April 12th, 2007 at 5:18 am
edit

#24 writes: “The standard assumption in climate research, in-
cluding the IPCC reports, is that over a century time
interval there is not likely to be any recognizable trend
to global temperatures (Risbey et al., 2000) and thus
the null model for climate signal detection is a flat tem-
perature trend with some autocorrelated noise. Any
warming trends in excess of that expected from normal
climatic variability are then assumed to be due to an-
thropogenic effects. ”

It is assumed that over a century the climate is stable, therefore any changes must be caused by man.

All one has to do is look at the record over the last few hundred years to see that the above assumption is garbage.
29
MarkW says:
April 12th, 2007 at 5:19 am
edit

Lee,

I don’t see a significant difference between the two quotes.
30
Jeff Norman says:
April 12th, 2007 at 6:11 am
edit

Re:#29

I agree with MarkW. They pretty much say the same thing to me. I wonder if it has something to do with how we are interpreting the word “plausible”.

It is plausible that current climate trends are just a continuation of past climate trends. We don’t have enough information. We just don’t know.

It is plausible that climate reconstructions going back more than 400 years may reveal something about past climates. We just don’t know.

It is plausible that Lee will read #29 and this post and respond in a collegial manner. We just don’t know though we can guess and call the guess a scenario.
31
bender says:
April 12th, 2007 at 6:41 am
edit

Not to feed the trolls, but …
Lee, did you listen to the ABC interview with Hughes, where he indicated he agreed with Graybill & Idso that there’s something unusual affecting bristlecone pine growth, some sort of “fertilization” effect above and beyond temperature & precip? And of course, you are aware of the extent to which these samples influence all of the multiproxy reconstructions. But you’re ok with that?

FWIW I agree that, of the CO2 science abstracts I’ve read, they distort the original abstracts. I think it’s obvious that that is intentional. That’s why the site exists: to interpret and synthesize the data from a particular viewpoint. Mind, there’s nothing dishonest about this. All datasets, all research domains have gaps. Thus there is often room for data re-interpretation, and always a need for perspective-oriented synthesis. I think it’s ridiculous to criticize a website as a whole, when there is so much real content to bite into.

Gary #23: use the search tool to explore the blog. Or work through it systematically. There’s a lot of interesting content here with answers to all your questions. General questions like this should go to “Unthreaded” so they don’t become a permanent fixture (or lead the discussion astray) in the more topical threads.
32
MarkW says:
April 12th, 2007 at 7:15 am
edit

I’ve debated a number of alarmists who declare that when NAS stated that Mann’s claim that the climate is currently warmer than at any
time in the last 1000 years was “plausible”, that the NAS had declared that Mann’s claim was correct. IE, plausible meant
one small step away from proven.

I was wondering if the alarmists would still feel that same way about this use of “plausible”.
33
Craig Loehle says:
April 12th, 2007 at 10:27 am
edit

Re 24, 25, 26, etc.
It is nice to have my work held up as an example of due diligence because I carefully compared my results to past studies of cycles, MWP etc.
My use of “plausible” was in contrast to the implicit dismissal of solar effects by the IPCC et al.
The fact that I only had 2 data sets of course constrained my precision. At the time (5 yrs ago) few data sets were archived that met my criteria. I now have a ms with much more data but GRL sent it back unreviewed because they were “tired of seeing this kind of study”. I sure you are all shocked. They didn’t understand my key point that when you leave out tree rings you might get a completely different answer. I have sent it elsewhere and await reviews.
34
Lee says:
April 12th, 2007 at 11:28 am
edit

bender, I have said many times now on this site – and to you directly, I believe – I am currently reserving judgement on the pre-500-years-or-so dendroclimate results. I am essentially accepting the NAS evaluation of the statistical weight of the evidence, pending the outcome of the current wars in the area and evidence from additional proxies and studies. This is for many reasons, one of which you allude to.

I’ve also said many times that I read this site specifically because I seek out opinions that challenge what I think to be true. This site is becoming less and less useful for that – SteveM’s continuing descent into snark about pictures from regions that are kind of near regions where data was gathered as just one example.

CO2Science is a propaganda vehicle. The Idsos mislead, they quote mine, they misrepresent data, they leave out relevant data and qualifiers of data, they cherry pick – why do you think they choose 1930 as the start of their misleading temp of the week. EVERY paper I’ve followed up from a CO2Science article has been misrepresented in some key way. Every one.

In the quote I look at, leaving out that middle sentence changes the implication from “This data isn’t sufficient to partition, but possibly its all natural – or possibly not’ to there’s a good chance its all natural.’ When I see people defending that kind of quote mining, I know to throw them out the window as intellectually solid challenges to my thinking. Its right up there with pretending that one can report a line fit to a time series with a confidence interval of +- zero, even when the line fit is different for any arbitrarily chosen period of years, or with pretending that the sig figs of the data sets an equivalent upper limit on the sig figs of the slope of a line fit to the data.
35
Lee says:
April 12th, 2007 at 11:34 am
edit

Craig Loehle,

An honest question here – When you compare temps derived for MWP with current (not 20th century, but over the last decade or so) temps what does it look like? How recent are you able to go with the actual proxy data available, as opposed to having to compare to current instrumental record?

Do you have a preprint available anywhere?

Are the graphics from your 2004 paper available online? I have been unable to find an online pdf, and the html version I’ve looked at munges the graphics.
Thanks!
36
Mark T. says:
April 12th, 2007 at 11:39 am
edit

they quote mine, they misrepresent data, they leave out relevant data and qualifiers of data, they cherry pick

Sorta like the Team, eh?

Mark
37
Lee says:
April 12th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
edit

re 26:

Note that those are not flat, and more important for the quote I dispute, they are not ASSUMED to be flat.

From page 11 of the SPM4.
38
UC says:
April 12th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
edit

5’€”95% range for 19 simulations from 5 climate models using only the natural forcings due to solar activity and volcanoes.

Impressive.
39
Hans Erren says:
April 12th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
edit

re 37:
How did they calculate the blue bands?
Minimise solar and multidecadal effects.

How did they calculate the pink bands?
Exaggerate water feedback and aerosol effects.
40
Dave Dardinger says:
April 12th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
edit

#34 Lee,

In the quote I look at, leaving out that middle sentence changes the implication from “This data isn’t sufficient to partition, but possibly its all natural – or possibly not’ to there’s a good chance its all natural.’

You really need to learn the meaning of terms. To say someting is “possible” by definition means that it also may not be the case. To say something is plausible is even weaker than possible. The difference is that something that’s plausible is to say that it “appears possible.” But it doesn’t claim that there’s clear evidence that it’s true. It really means “not impossible” that is, there’s no real showstopper off the top.

That’s why when the NAS report said the Hockeystick was plausible those here recognized that they were damning with faint praise. That is, there was still nothing which presented the actual case to be something like a hockey stick, but the NAS said there was no solid evidence now in play.

So, your claim that leaving out the middle sentence made the implication that there was a “good chance” the results were from natural causes, comes from a misreading of what plausible vs possible mean in this context. The Idso’s were saying that this paper showed that it could be all or partly natural but only in the sense of not having been shown that all-natural was impossible.

Now, I know you can respond, “but it seems to me….” but so what? To continue this discussion, you need to show that your way of interpreting the terms is correct. I don’t think you can.
41
jae says:
April 12th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
edit

If that sentence is meaningless, why did the author include it right there between the two sentences that the Idsos quoted? This is not it seems to me.’ This is quote mining, and it is one of very many instances of such on that site. When the Idsos connect those two quotes with “and therefore that” they create the strong implication that this data is evidence for the latter sentence. But the sentence they left out, which occurs at precisely that place, explicitly says that it is not good enough evidence for that.
The Idsos are good at this crap, I’ll give em that.

Note = post 195, the transfer post, was moved her without the original post to which I was replying. That original post is currently post 24 on the “Reply to an Angry Dendrochronologist” thread. that original post 24 cited an article on CO2Science. steveM on that other thread says this was moved becasue i was ‘hijacking’ the thread by criticising the Idsos. Apparently, it is ok to cite the Idsos, but not to criticise the cite, in that thread.

RE: #196 – I’ve got to give you kudos for making the call that we’d get more rain in California after all. Not only that, but it came straight down from the north. We are, like last year at this time, in a classic Siberia Express set up, albeit, sadly, a drier one than last year. At least one more of these fast moving Arctic storms is proged for the weekend. After that, who knows, we’ll take anything we can get. I hope, like last year, the fronts continue until the Solstice. No way we’ll make up the deficit we have, but every bit will help. Late snowpack helps more than early snowpack.

Snowed all day here in the Springs. There was 3″ on my car, but the ground was warm enough that a lot melted. More on the way. This is not unusual for CO in April. My folks refuse to visit on my son’s bday (next Wednesday) due to repeated snows, including the day he was birthed. :)

Meanwhile, posts left in place on that thread include the following. Apparently, generalized attacks on the climate science community are ok, but pointing out flaws in the Idsos work is hijacking and worth removing accompanying substantive commentary and graphics?

Dave Dardinger says:
April 11th, 2007 at 9:24 am

Steve:

I would be hard-pressed to think up a complimentary adjective to describe the 1960 truncation of the Briffa et al 2001 reconstruction in IPCC TAR

How about “surprising” or “novel”? and if anyone complains that it’s been done before, you can fall back on “I meant novel in the sense of the opposite of non-fiction.”
2
Mark T. says:
April 11th, 2007 at 10:04 am

Standard (flawed) debate tactic: claim your “rival” isn’t looking at the big-picture, or only selectively reviewing evidence, then dismiss his entire argument by noting there are other “better” methods in spite of the fact that none can be cited. It is sort of a sleight of hand.

If the angry dendro’s arguments are so compelling, why do they not address the arguments Steve M. has made head on? IMO, they can’t.

Mark
3
Mark T. says:
April 11th, 2007 at 10:06 am

BTW, if they think Rutherford and Mann’s RegEM method is “recent work that surpasses” the PCA (non-standard or otherwise) nonsense, they are mistaken.

Mark
4
C_G_K says:
April 11th, 2007 at 11:34 am

Re#2

Yes, this is a very common tactic used to defend bad science. Another related tactic is to say or imply that the science that proves something is so complex that only a select few can understand it. The RC blog seems to have this approach down to an art form where they present arguments with virtually incomprehensible language and technical jargon, while liberally throwing around words like debunked, refuted, etc., to characterize arguments from critics.
5
C_G_K says:
April 11th, 2007 at 11:44 am

Actually, come to think of it, I used to do that when I was a kid. When my little brother would figure out that something I said was wrong (and this bugged me), I would try to dress up my language with words and bafflegab he didn’t understand to try and make my argument sound more authoritative… like I really knew what I was talking about. Didn’t take him long to get wise to this tactic.
6
Gary

—

Steve Sadlov says:
April 11th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

RE: #13 and #9 – The simple fact is that in the so called “Climate Sciences” field, poor, exagerated publications, using dumpster dived or manipulated “data” tend to be in the majority. So much low hanging fruit, so little time ….
15
Mark T. says:
April 11th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

while other key fields that relate to the issue of climate change like the IR spectroscopy of atmospheric CO2 are ruled as being completely inadmissible in terms of commenting on this blog

This topic has been discussed at length here, so the statement is completely without merit. Try doing a search.

Mark
—

MarkW says:
April 12th, 2007 at 5:07 am

JohnM,

You claim that those “in the know”, know which papers are faulty and don’t cite them, so there is no need to tell the rest of the world.

The problem is that the rest of the world assumes that any paper that is peer reviewed must be good. Then they use these faulty papers
as a basis for their own work. Such as the in the climate change debate.

The result is that your desire to protect your peers from criticism that might hurt their feelings ends up being support for bad policy
based on bad data.

That’s not good. The implications of Kyoto go way beyond the feelings of a handfull of dendroclimatologists.
—

I’ve also said many times that I read this site specifically because I seek out opinions that challenge what I think to be true. This site is becoming less and less useful for that – SteveM’s continuing descent into snark about pictures from regions that are kind of near regions where data was gathered as just one example

I hereby declare that this site is now totally useless for you Lee. You can leave now. It won’t improve either so no need for you to return in the future.

Friends of Science has a new series of short videos entitled “Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You’re Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change”, which I think are quite good. Not quite as slick a production as “Swindle”, but nevertheless worth a few minutes. As a bonus, Steve and Ross are prominently featured in discussing the hockeystick.

Lee, I don’t want to take time to transfer posts. I have to manually edit the threads and it takes time.

Transfer:

george h. says:

April 11th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

edit

Mann and company went out of their way to use a tree ring chronology (Bristlecone Pines) which as originally described by Graybill and Idso was responsive to CO2 fertilization and, as I understand it, NOT so much to temperature ‘€” a perfect proxy for the team, but as Graybill-Idso stressed, a poor climate proxy. We all know the results: a famous graph which erased just about everything we know about global temperatures from recorded human history (Until they were found out by Steve and Ross). Here is an interesting paper which examines two proxies in detail which does the opposite’€” it validates or better is validated by what we know from the historic record: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V7/N4/EDIT.jsp We should all be suspicious of any proxy study coming from the dendro community which does not rise to this standard.
Steve McIntyre says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:11 pm

edit

Lee, the mere use of the word “plausible” by a poster is insufficient grounds to hijack a thread to discuss the Idsos. I’ve transferred this to Unthreaded.

27
John Baltutis says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:16 pm

edit

Re: #41 & 43
Go to http://esnips.com/, type Loehle in the search box, and get three results (links are there, not here):
Loehle(2004)EnergyEnvironment.pdf in climate
Loehle(2004)EcologicalModelling.pdf in climate
Loehle(2005)MathGeol.pdf in climate

28
Dave Dardinger says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:17 pm

edit

#34 Lee,
I did not say the sentence was meaningless. It is, in fact, another way of saying what the other two sentences say. In addition it also goes further in showing why there’s more “wiggle room” since they say there’s not sufficient evidence to determine how much of the warming is natural and how much AGW. The third sentence then goes on to expand and say that it’s even “plausable” (i.e. not impossible) that it’s all natural.
The point is you can’t quote the entire abstract. The Idsos got the gist of it and you’re just being obstinate trying to claim they did anything wrong. Anyone interested can simply google for the paper, which they cite, and read the entire abstract. BTW, unlike you warmers, we skeptics don’t just stop with reading a pull quote. If something’s interesting we want to see more of it.

29
John Baltutis says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

edit

Whoops!!! Steve, please move #27 and then delete this one.

30
Lee says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:51 pm

edit

SteveM, the posts you moved contained substantive commentary on and criticisms of the paper underlying the statement in post 24. Post 24 links directly to that article on CO2Science – I offered commentary on both inaccuracies – with my substantiating evidence – in the CO2Science article directly linked, and comment on the underlying paper. You left post 24 referring to the CO2Science article here. You moved my posts – with commentary this is in many places substantive on the topic of the underlying paper, and in many places is responding to without including post 24, dissociating it from the post it was criticizing. In other words, you left the originating post 24, but removed my criticisms into a context where they don’t point at that initiating post.
I am more or less forced to conclude that your problem isn’t discussion of the Idsos in this thread – post 24 initiated that, and is still here – it is criticism of the Idsos in this thread, or criticism of a paper cited via the Idsos site.

31
Lee says:

April 12th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

edit

Dardinger,
re 28.
Unlike us warmers, perhaps you denialists aren’t observant enough to realize that since I quoted the entire three sentences including the part left out, referred to a reinforcing sentence in the last paragraph of the paper, and further discussed data and analysis from the paper itself, I obviously read the entire paper.
IOW, Dardinger, Shox Css and stop trolling.

For insurance companies, like Lloyds, the best thing to increase renewals, coverages and premiums (and, ergo, profits) is an actual catastophe. An even more profitable occurence is the heightened belief that a catastrophe will occur. Again, when these statements are made without substantial and objective assessment of the available data, one has to ask “Cui bono?” and then assess the objectiveness of the assertion.

RE: #206 – I don’t know how financially transparent Lloyds are, but it sure would be interesting to know whether or not they are significant investors in …. but of course …. the carbon trading Ponzi scheme. Of course, if Lloyds are in it, they are way up there toward the top of the pyramid.

Re: #197 by Pat Frank
“#33 transferred ‘€” Craig, did you ever reply to Richard Swanson’s criticism of your 2004 “Climate change: detection and attribution of trends from long-term geologic data” Ecol. Model. 171, 433’€”450 paper?”
Swanson was objecting to some of the dating in the data I used. Very geological & technical. When I asked him for a corrected timeline on the data, I got a very snippy answer that this was not his job. Clearly if the dating is off this might affect my model but it depends on how much it is off. This just highlights the difficulties in using proxy data as if they were dated with perfect accuracy.

GCMs are large and complex programming efforts. Such large efforts are prone to have many undetected and undesirable interactions between their components. These interactions can create unexpected operations that can create disastrous error. The Mars Global Surveyor satellite suffered total failure which resulted in the end of the mission because of such interactions

“The loss of the spacecraft was the result of a series of events linked to a computer error made five months before the likely battery failure,” said board Chairperson Dolly Perkins, deputy director-technical of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , Greenbelt , Md.

On Nov. 2, after the spacecraft was ordered to perform a routine adjustment of its solar panels, the spacecraft reported a series of alarms, but indicated that it had stabilized. That was its final transmission. Subsequently, the spacecraft reoriented to an angle that exposed one of two batteries carried on the spacecraft to direct sunlight. This caused the battery to overheat and ultimately led to the depletion of both batteries. Incorrect antenna pointing prevented the orbiter from telling controllers its status, and its programmed safety response did not include making sure the spacecraft orientation was thermally safe.

The board also concluded that the Mars Global Surveyor team followed existing procedures, but that procedures were insufficient to catch the errors that occurred. The board is finalizing recommendations to apply to other missions, such as conducting more thorough reviews of all non-routine changes to stored data before they are uploaded and to evaluate spacecraft contingency modes for risks of overheating.

A GCM programmer visited this blog for a while and courteously answered many questions. I mentioned the interaction problem to him and asked him what software methodology did hid group use to detect and prevent them. He relied by pointing me to the system user manual, which I took to mean that no methodology was followed.

The NASA report indicated that the error produced by an unexpected interaction resulted in complete mission failure. This was in spite of all required procedures being carried out. One can then well wonder about the quality of the output of the GCMs. They may or may not have modeled the underlying physics properly. However if no attention is paid to the effect of software interactions, then the output must be treated with caution. One does not know if the output is the result of the modeled physics or of the errors caused by the un-modeled software interactions.

RE: #215 – No doubt, only a small percentage of academic and research institution programmers have anywhere near the hands on experience in unit testing, let alone integration testing, of software deployments that their peers in commercial enterprises have. In most cases in the non commercial world, there are minimal to no processes for designing for, assuring and testing for quality.

One does not know if the output is the result of the modeled physics or of the errors caused by the un-modeled software interactions.

It’s probably worse than that. There are a lot of documented problems with the temperature measurements of the ground based weather stations that make their validity a teeny bit doubtful. Despite that the models “hindcast” the temperature quite well.

It’s probably worse than that. There are a lot of documented problems with the temperature measurements of the ground based weather stations that make their validity a teeny bit doubtful. Despite that the models “hindcast” the temperature quite well.

Software that gets the “right” answer from questionable data processed by code not regourously written and tested is a sign of grave danger. Testing to get the “right” answer is the wrong way of testing. Although, as I was told, this is how GCMs are tested.

#215 — I ran across a paper some time ago that pointed out exactly the sort of problem you describe: O. Pauluis and K Emanuel (2004) “Numerical Instability Resulting from Infrequent Calculation of Radiative Heating” Mon. Weath. Rev. 132, 673-686.

Periodic radiative heating updates in climate calculations were having the effect of a cyclic input into the calculated climate itself. From the sbstract: “In the worst case, this lag gives rise to an exponential numerical instability with a growth rate proportional to the time interval between radiative calculations.“

I don’t know if you had a chance last week to watch CBC’s (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) journalism in action in Alexandria, Egypt?
“It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.”
I refer you to the link http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/climatechange/roadstories.html for replays. The CBC was doing a week-long special on Climage Change leading up to the release of the detailed report from the IPCC this past weekend.
Please pay special attention to the clips on SINKING ALEXANDRIA and SALTY FARMERS.
“Responsible journalism” seems to have become an oxymoron when it comes to discussions of Climate Change. I think we need a separate on-going thread just dealing with the way journalists cover this issue.
If you have ever read anything about the Nile Delta or if you were ever awake during your geography class in high school, you would likely have learned that the Nile Delta was in danger as soon as the average annual deposition of 100 million tons of silt into that delta was PERMANENTLY LOST upon the completion of the High Aswan Dam in the late 1960-s (which now entirely sequesters this silt well upstream from that dam).
And yet not even ONE mention of this very real FACT amongst the presentation of the other “facts” — such as that regarding the newly “aggressive” and rising Mediterranean which is now causing the Nile Delta to disappear and the soil to be despoiled by salt. Would any thinking person have expected the delta to magically survive in the absence of the deposition of all that silt? Maybe the CBC needs to ask itself how the delta got there in the first place ‘€” did space aliens build it?
This is science?
This is unbelievable!
C’est vraiment incroyable!
The only excuse that I could imagine the CBC coming up with is that their researchers have been getting their science from the Guardian.

Note the high IR values (yellows and reds) in the tropics and subtropics. Much of this occurs in the descending parts of the Hadley-Walker cells where the air radiates away its heat, cools and sinks towards the surface. Values are especially high in the hot African desert and India – my friends in Mumbai will be glad when the monsoon arrives.

Note the blues in the Amazon basin and extending east from Indonesia. These are areas of heavy tropical rain, where air ascends. There is also a trace of the ITCZ in the Atlantic and west Africa. These are regions of cloudiness, where surface IR meets a lot of resistance on its journey to space.

I was researching the cited evidence for a climate porn article on Kiribati, and was struck by this piece of information:

“These low-lying coral atolls, (33 in all) are the protruding tips of undersea volcanoes, and extend only a few feet above sea level.”

Why, if the atolls began as volcanoes, are they all within a metre of the sea surface? That 33 volcanoes should all be the same height by chance is not reasonable. Same issue with the Maldives, and many other low-lying island groups. So what is it that makes them all basically the same height above sea level? Surely this is a dynamic process of some sort, but if just simple weathering, what stops them from eventually disappearing entirely?

Also, if mostly comprising coral, won’t the incessant wave action, occasional storms, king tides and even tsunamis eat them away at the edges?
Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks for the info. Does this imply that with respect to sea levels (the porno line of course being that Kiribati is doomed doomed doomed), that coral atolls are basically self-adjusting, at least in the long term?

CO2 from burning coal is converted into ethanol and animal feed. But those materials are converted back into CO2 by cars and animals and released into the atmosphere.

I guess the reasoning is that some ethanol and animal feed originate from (or displace) fossil fuels, and that production will be displaced if the economics are right (which they probably are not, without government subsidy). But my impression is that most ethanol is from organic sources and there is, or will be, an ethanol surplus, even with blending into gasoline. Animal feed seems to be from existing natural sources, unless it’s fertilizer that gets displaced.

Re 227, coral reefs can grow vertically at 3 mm per annum, which also happens to be what sea level is doing right now. Please bear in mind that all the coral reefs you see now were dead 20,000 years ago, when sea level was 120 metres lower and the reefs were a line of cliffs. They got killed off in every ice age for the last 2.5 million years, at least 20 of them. After the volcano moves off the hot spot that formed it, the volcano starts sinking. If the coral can’t keep up with the rate of sinking, the coral reef drowns. This is exemplified by the Hawaiin Islands which have a string of seamounts to the northwest.

As a software engineer who has worked on applications that are made up of millions of lines of code, I can tell you that the complexity level can become extreme. Obviously, it is impossible for one person to be familiar with all the code, which of course means many individuals and/or teams become involved, further complicating matters. When designing complex programs, it is important to consider the architecture carefully before you get started writing any code. A good design usually limits the interaction between components as too much interaction is almost always bad and makes modifications and extensions to the program difficult (as an example, look how long it took for Microsoft to finally get Vista out the door).

As for testing, we always had a clear idea of exactly what the program behavior should be. Our main problem was that is was difficult due to the size and complexity of the program to “exercise” all the program code and run through all the possible usage scenarios to ferret out any errors. For climate models, what would be the “expected” behavior I wonder? I think it would be easy to tweak the program to produce almost any output. Also, many software applications are filled with hacks and cludges where shortcuts and assumptions are made or where the output is just plain forced to be something that you want (throwing your elegant algorithms out the window). As for peer review, I think it is important for the code to be reviewed to look for any hacks that may compromise the value of the output.

I can tell you, as someone who knows a lot about a computers ability to model complex systems, I have no faith in the predictions they make about climate, especially over long periods of time. It appears to me that the earths atmosphere is a poor candidate for modelling, either with mathematical models comprised of a number of variables and constants, or with computers that add algorithms and vast amounts of data to the mix. Models have their place in predicting the weather over short periods of time, but they are limited in scope for predicting climate long term.

One more thought about testing. I have a feeling that past climate is used as a benchmark for testing. In other words, the model is used to predict “past” climate since it can be compared to the actual documented climate for accuracy. The problem with this approach is that all you have proven is your model is a good “predictor” of past climate which doesn’t mean it will be a good predictor of future climate. Also, as we can see on this website, reconstruction of past climate using proxies is a controversial area of science, especially as you try to go further back in time.

Thanks for the link. I’ve just watched it and one thin that struck me immediately is the fact that it showed interviews with scientists from both sides of the AGW debate e.g. Wigley, Schneider etc as well as Lindzen, Michaels etc. In that regard it was more balanced than the recent Durkin ‘Swindle’ documentary. I also like the use of the ‘pillars of AGW’ metaphor which I’ve recently used on another thread. Perhaps I now need to persuade a TV/Film producer to use the Wizard of Oz as a metaphor for the AGE debate? Its looks like this was made in the late 80s/early 90s soI presume some of those interviewed have now retired? What ever happened to Peren from the BAS? I wonder if he knows ‘Will of the Wiki’ and what he thinks of him? I also liked the brief exerprt of Maggie T back in 1990 (no Sir Crispin Tickell though!).

Re 227, coral reefs can grow vertically at 3 mm per annum, which also happens to be what sea level is doing right now. Please bear in mind that all the coral reefs you see now were dead 20,000 years ago, when sea level was 120 metres lower and the reefs were a line of cliffs. They got killed off in every ice age for the last 2.5 million years, at least 20 of them. After the volcano moves off the hot spot that formed it, the volcano starts sinking. If the coral can’t keep up with the rate of sinking, the coral reef drowns. This is exemplified by the Hawaiin Islands which have a string of seamounts to the northwest.

fFreddy replied in #239:

Re #235, David Archibald
Excellent, someone who knows what he is talking about.

After the volcano moves off the hot spot that formed it, the volcano starts sinking. If the coral can’t keep up with the rate of sinking, the coral reef drowns.

Can I ask, how fast does a volcano sink once it moves off its hot spot ?
And when you say the coral drowns, is it that there isn’t enough light for photosynthesis once it gets too deep ?

fFreddy, you might be a bit more careful about assuming that people know what they are talking about.

The process of coral atoll formation was first discovered by a scientist who made his name in another field entirely, Charles Darwin. At the time, atoll existence was a puzzle, because although coral only grows in the upper 50 m or so of the ocean, the coral under atolls is thousands of meters thick. Darwin deduced that the ring shape of an atoll exists because the corals have grown up as the ground underneath them subsided. He described the discovery in his autobiography:

“No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of S. America before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of S. America of the intermittent elevation of the land, together with the denudation and deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of coral. To do this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls.” (Darwin, 1887, p. 98, 99)

Thus as Darwin discovered, although the ground beneath them has subsided, and thus the sea level relative to the ground has risen greatly, the processes that build coral atolls have ensured that the atoll islands always stayed above sea level. However, David’s claim that coral reefs can only grow 3 mm per year is too small. Even if the sea level rise were to double, the coral can keep up. Coral growth rates have been measured at 280 mm/year in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal (Sewell 1935), and 414 mm/year in the Celebes (Verstelle 1932). When I lived on a coral atoll in the Solomon Islands, we had to clear out the coral in the pass between the ocean and the lagoon every ten years or so, because about 600 mm of coral would have grown up in that time, and the boats couldn’t get in and out.

In waters which are not as warm as the Celebes, the Solomon Islands, or the Bay of Bengal, coral growth rates are of course slower. Here in Hawaii there is a drowned reef. It survived the rapid sea level rise during the early part of the deglaciation, but succumbed to sea level rise and drowned during Meltwater Pulse 1A, during the transition from the last glacial to the Holocene. During that time, the average sea level rise was ~ 40 – 70 mm/yr, an order of magnitude greater than the current rate. However, in the warmer waters, the atolls survived even this rapid rate of sea level rise, which is why atoll islands like Tuvalu and Kirbati exist today … because they didn’t drown.

Finally, contrary to David’s claim, volcanoes sink when they are on the hot spot (because the lithosphere bends from the increasing weight of the volcano), and stop sinking once the volcano move off the hot spot. I live on the Big Island in Hawaii, an active volcano which is over the hot spot. According to the US Geological Service, it is sinking at about 2 mm per year. Maui, the next island to the east, off the hot spot and no longer active, is sinking at about 0.9 mm/year, less than half the rate of the Big Island. Oahu and Kauii, even further east away from the hot spot, are only subsiding at about 0.1 mm/year.

When it comes to getting information off the web … caveat emptor …

w.

References:

Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887

Sewell, R.B.S. (1935) Studies on coral and coral-formations in Indian waters Geographic and Oceanographic Research in Indian Waters No. 8, Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 9:461-539.

Verstelle, J. Th. (1932) The growth rate at various depths of coral reefs in the Dutch East Indian Archipelago, Treubia, 14:117-126.

#67–sorry I’m only just now getting around to this, but I have been incredibly busy recently.

I have sen these before in fact–and there are actually only eight of them.
Here are my humble responses to Idso’s “natural experiments”.

1, 2, and 3’€”

In general, it seems that climate scientists feel that Idso errs by leaving out all other factors and feedbacks from his original experiments. As Richard Kerr writes in Science magazine (I will quote briefly since the article appears to be copyrighted, though I will cite it) 13 Aug 1982:

“…observations from a single site, a single country, or one part of the ocean cannot suffice to verify what is a global process. A major failing, they say, is the omission of the ocean from Idso’s natural experiments…Those experiments extend over only a few months, while the surface layer of the ocean requires 6 to 8 years to respond significantly to a change in radiation. A part of that response is to send more water vapor into the atmosphere, which traps even more radiant energy, just as carbon dioxide does.”

Also, FWIW

“Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies limited their models geographically and temporally in order to duplicate Idso’s observations. Their models’ responses were comparable to that calculated by Idso.”

RealClimate also makes a different point, though the math is I must admit still a little technical for me, and for most people, probably:

These seem to replicate Idso’s earlier assumption that sensitivity can be calculated simply by a land surface flux. 4 in particular seems to assume that the warming from a no-atmosphere Earth to a present-atmosphere Earth describes the same curve as one from our present atmosphere to one with a doubled CO2 concentration.

6

My sense, based on what I’ve read on the Web, is that this is a mistaken connection. Since CO2 proportions are very different between Mars and Venus on the one hand, and Earth on the other, no direct comparison can be made. The interactions between the various greenhouse gases and the various contributions to equilibrium temperatures (remember that Earth also has oceans, and Venus and Mars do not!) probably make this an irrelevant analysis.

7

I do not know what the current state of thinking about the early faint sun is, but the Wikipedia entry on it notes that most likely methane was responsible for a much higher greenhouse effect, so once again I am not sure how relevant Idso’s analysis is.

8

Well, again, this is a measurement of sensitivity without system feedback, but the warming models whose results I’ve seen indicate that warming is expected to be greater at the northern pole than at the equator.

“They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth’s climate became steadily warmer.”

This is a century-wide measure. Solar radiation has not increased since the mid-century as fast as temperatures. The only way any solar hypothesis can account for this is to hand-wave and argue for a delayed response in climate to solar radiation. But I have not seen any evidence for this other than their wishful thinking. (And FWIW we are currently at the nadir of a sunspot cycle. It will be interesting to see what temperature does over the next 6-8 years.)

#232 (@ David Smith)
Frankly, I don’t know. I just used Engauge Digitizer to derive mins and maxs from the current and previous version and compared them to one another (which is absolute:=(V07-V06) and relative:=(V07-V06)/V06).

mzed, thanks for your comments. The statements by Kerr about items 1, 2, and 3 are mostly based on Stephen Schneider’s criticism of Idso’s work, published in Science Vol 210. Idso’s response to Schneider’s criticism from the same issue explains clearly why Schneider’s claims are mistaken.

Also, Kerr provides no citation for the statement that:

Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies limited their models geographically and temporally in order to duplicate Idso’s observations. Their models’ responses were comparable to that calculated by Idso.

Do you have any citation for those claims? I am generally skeptical of uncited allegations that “models show” something or other, as we all know that models can show whatever their programmers want them to show. In particular, I don’t see how in 1980 (the date of the claims) the climate models would have that kind of local resolution, as the regional estimates of even modern climate models vary wildly.

US federal government runs world-wide program to reduce vent-off of methane from NG extraction and transporting, and from oil extraction. According to numerous estimates, Russian NG emissions were significantly reduced thanks to mutual US (and some Germany) and Russia efforts. Still, went-offs are accounting for about 5% of all Russian NG extracted and delivered. Considering that methane is about 30 times (in real world) more potent GHG than CO2, these efforts are quite substantial and are, actually, win-win situation from any (including economical) perspective.

Yes, thank you’€”I knew I had read that exchange in Science before, but I was unable to track it down.

The claim about Schneider and Hansen’s GCM replication of Idso’s localized results is just an aside, and I have no idea where, when, or how this was done. I have no desire to defend it; I just thought it was an interesting claim.

Idso claims that his sensitivity is “a result of all those feedback processes’€”known and unknown’€”that operate in the real atmosphere.” But the point that his critics are trying to show is that this is simply not true’€”he is not examining feedbacks for more than a brief period of time’€”in other words, he is missing all those feedbacks which may only arise when a forcing is maintained within the system for periods of years’€”or even one year. Part of that analysis involves examining the role the atmosphere plays in the entire climate system’€”this is what Idso in fact admits he is leaving out. Indeed, Idso himself seems to have doubts that his results can be applied over the long term:

“It also remains for future experiments to establish the validity of applying a relatively short-term response function, such as I have measured, to a long-term problem, such as the CO2-climate connection.” (Idso, Science 210:8)

Finally’€”and I cannot help but be amused by this’€”he quotes directly from Madden and Ramanathan’s abstract, but fails to note that the conclusion, “It is not”, which he quotes, is but the first clause of a much longer sentence that qualifies the negative result’€”I will, unlike Idso, quote it in full:

“It is not, possibly because the predicted warming is being delayed more than a decade by ocean thermal inertia, or because there is a compensating cooling due to other factors.” (Madden and Ramanathan, Science 209:763)

This is exactly why Idso is (rightly) criticized! He fails to account for the relationship of the atmosphere with the larger climate system. This is why people (including the proprietor of this website) argue about ocean temperatures. Indeed, if Idso had read more deeply into Madden and Ramanathan’s article, he might have read the following similar sentence (or maybe he did, I don’t know):

“The analysis of observed temperature variability at 60degN indicates that the surface warming predicted by current general circulation models of climate…should be evident now or at least within the next decade, depending on the seasonal dependence of the warming and on the ocean thermal inertia of the climate system. Since a recent 2-year average is not higher than a 20-year average from 1906 through 1925, we conclude that either such models overpredict the signal, or other compensatory climate changes are occurring. If the latter is not a serious problem and the warming is occurring at a rate lower than that predicted by GCM’s but higher than that predicted by zero-feedback models, then it should be detectable anytime from the present to about the year 2000.” (Madden and Ramanathan, Science 209:767)

Well, lo and behold: contemporary GCM’s not only include compensatory climate changes such as the overabundance of aerosols in the atmosphere from about 1940-1975, but they have also most definitely detected the signal prior to the year 2000!

All of this goes to show why Idso’s experiments are not taken seriously.

Finally’€”and I cannot help but be amused by this’€”he quotes directly from Madden and Ramanathan’s abstract, but fails to note that the conclusion, “It is not”, which he quotes, is but the first clause of a much longer sentence that qualifies the negative result’€”I will, unlike Idso, quote it in full:

“It is not, possibly because the predicted warming is being delayed more than a decade by ocean thermal inertia, or because there is a compensating cooling due to other factors.” (Madden and Ramanathan, Science 209:763)

This is exactly why Idso is (rightly) criticized! He fails to account for the relationship of the atmosphere with the larger climate system. This is why people (including the proprietor of this website) argue about ocean temperatures. Indeed, if Idso had read more deeply into Madden and Ramanathan’s article, he might have read the following similar sentence (or maybe he did, I don’t know):

Idso’s comment about the relationship of experiments 1-3 with the larger climate system is worth quoting.

Consider the differences among these three situations. Different atmospheric constituents are involved (dust and water vapor), as well as different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (solar and thermal wavelengths), different time scales (hours to many months), and different magnitudes of forcing functions. Yet all situations yield essentially the same value for the near-surface air temperature response function – except for the last approach, where a dozen stations on the Pacific Coast yielded a result that was only half as great; I took that value to be an upper limit for the world’s ocean surfaces. Thus, although the data base I worked with was admittedly not global, the good agreement among the results of such diverse experiments suggests that the atmospheric response function thus elucidated may be globally applicable. Obviously, more experiments of this nature would be helpful in establishing the validity of this supposition.

I note that you seem to ignore part of the sentence as well. Ramanathan say one of the two possible reasons they did not detect the warming is that it is not happening because of feedbacks or other factors in the natural system …

In addition, while a greater than decadal scale “ocean thermal inertia” is cited all the time as a possible reason for lack of change in air temperatures, I have yet to read an explanation of exactly how that works. Bearing in mind that heat is not mixed downwards in the ocean and that the overturning of the oceans is on the scale of thousands of years, what would be the mechanism for a two or three decadal delay?

In addition, if there were such a delay, it would be readily visible in the instrumental record. Here are the land (CRUTEM) and sea (HadSST2) temperatures for the last 150 years:

Perhaps you can find a two or three decade “ocean thermal inertia” in those figures … I fear I can’t. Next, you quote Ramanathan as saying:

Indeed, if Idso had read more deeply into Madden and Ramanathan’s article, he might have read the following similar sentence (or maybe he did, I don’t know):

“The analysis of observed temperature variability at 60degN indicates that the surface warming predicted by current general circulation models of climate…should be evident now or at least within the next decade, depending on the seasonal dependence of the warming and on the ocean thermal inertia of the climate system. Since a recent 2-year average is not higher than a 20-year average from 1906 through 1925, we conclude that either such models overpredict the signal, or other compensatory climate changes are occurring. If the latter is not a serious problem and the warming is occurring at a rate lower than that predicted by GCM’s but higher than that predicted by zero-feedback models, then it should be detectable anytime from the present to about the year 2000.” (Madden and Ramanathan, Science 209:767)

Well, lo and behold: contemporary GCM’s not only include compensatory climate changes such as the overabundance of aerosols in the atmosphere from about 1940-1975, but they have also most definitely detected the signal prior to the year 2000!

Here you completely misunderstand Ramanathans point. It was not that GCMs would detect the effect of CO2 by the year 2000. It was that Ramanathan’s analysis should be able to detect the warming. His analysis depends solely on the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 as calculated by the GCMs. But that has not changed (or grown any more accurate) in thirty years – it is still given as 1.5° – 4.5° for a doubling of CO2.

Finally, you are repeating the AGW mantra about aerosols as though it were established. We have very little information on the amount of airborne aerosols during the period in question, and we have even less information on the effect of the aerosols. The fact that we can cherry-pick values for both of those variables and force a GCM to match the historical record means nothing.

The aerosol hypothesis fails because during the time in question (~ 1945-1980), the Southern Hemisphere cooled more than the North (not possible with aerosols) and the global land temperatures and sea temperatures decreased at the same rate (also not possible with aerosols).

I wonder if Chris Landsea is aware that he featured on a programme on BBC2 this evening called the “Science of Superstorms” where the view was promoted that global warming (i.e. SST) and hurricane intensity are linked? I thought this was the reason that he resigned from the IPCC? The programme is presenting the science behind the fictional drama on BBC1 called “Superstorm”. In addition to Chris Landsea the programme also featured Kerry Emanuel, Roelof Bruintjes and Greg Holland. Greg Holland presented the conclusions of his study of storm intensity from 1970 – which showed the link.

I am not a climate scientist, but as I understand it, climate is different than weather.
Lorenz described weather prediction as “a pattern of infinite complexity”
My questions are:
1) What time frame are the computer climate models applicable to? Ex. 1 year, a decade, a hundred years or longer?
2) I believe hurricanes are a weather phenomena, so how can an increase of hurricane activity be made in 2005 for 2006?
3) The prediction was wrong. Is a prediction of “increased hurricanes, floods, droughts etc. for the next 10 years any better?

There is no difference between climate models and weather models, climate models are weather models that calculate a long time. Weather models are constraned with observations so they are fairly accurate. Climate models are constrained with parametrisations: eg rising temperature leads to drought in the tropical rain forests, because it is observed that rising CO2 correlates with drier rainforests (but unfortunately that is caused by deforestation) . So the problem with climate models is digging out the underlying assumptions in the non-physical parametrisations. the most important one being clouds and precipitation as function of increasing CO2.

Hello, Gord. Those are sizeable questions and opinions may vary of course.

On #2, there’s little value to a hurricane season prediction made a year in advance. About a month in advance of a season (April/May) it may be possible to discern certain weather patterns that will hold true three or four months later, but that’s about it.

The best guess is to forecast the climatological mean, but even that varies as one can choose either the long-term value (57 years, about 9 or 10 per year) or the active-phase value (about 14 or 15 since 1995). The for-fun collection of 2007 forecasts on another thread has the parties clustered around those two climatological means.

On #3, if you believe in climate oscillations, in particular one (AMO) that affects the Atlantic, then there is a basis for thinking that hurricanes will stay active for another several decades. But that’s driven by nature, not AGW.
On floods and droughts, in an AGW world there are plausible physical arguments for greater humidity (more fuel for rain) and larger regions of subsiding air in the subtropics (an expansion of the dry subtropical areas) yet, on the other hand, less temperature contrast (less energy for storms). How does all that play out? No one knows. I think those get mentioned mainly for emotional impact, because a 1C or 2C increase in temperature but itself has little meaning to most people.

That’s quite interesting. According to your link, the current Hadley model predicts much of the US to suffer from severe decreases in precipitation (-150 to -50 mm/yr), most of the US suffering from a slight but possibly important decline in precipitation (-25 to 0 mm/yr) and only a few spots where the precipitation is projected to increase.

According to a previous Hadley model used in the 2000 US Nat’l Assessment, almost all of the US was expected to see increases in precipitation across the 20th century, with some sections seeing substantial increases.

I find this basically to be a complete reversal of model results, and it only took a few model revisions and years to get there. What does that say for the credibility of climate models?

Additionally, thanks apparently to 20th century warming, according to the Nat’l Assessment: “Significant increases in precipitation have occurred across much of the US in the 20th century.” So exactly what is going to produce the opposite results in the US with warming in the 21st century?

The aerosol hypothesis fails because during the time in question (~ 1945-1980), the Southern Hemisphere cooled more than the North (not possible with aerosols) and the global land temperatures and sea temperatures decreased at the same rate (also not possible with aerosols).

I don’t know if your statement is still correct. Let me explain. If you consider the new version of the HadCRUG data set, it is hard to claim that SH cooled more than NH. Here is the plot:

It seems to me that SH temperature rised quasi monotonically since 1910 to 1975, except a warm noise around 1940. That has a big consequence also in the global composite.
In my point of view, they got rid of the ’45-80 cooling. The previous version is published in TAR 2001.
What do you think?

To add to #259, the disagreement in #259 is between the 2000 US Nat’l Assessment with the US portion of the (b) figure. HadCM2 was used to generate the predictions for the Nat’l Assesment. Intereestingly, the “ensemble mean” of HadCM2 is what generated the (a) figure. The polar opposite results of HadCM2 vs HadCM3 for the US, especially in the context of HadCM3 producing precipitation changes with 21st century warming which are the opposite of those observed under 20th century warming, would seem to raise some big red flags.

Comparing Fig (a) to Fig (b), similar results are observed in large portions of West Africa, India, western “former USSR,” etc. One model iteration goes from predicting huge precipitation increases to huge precipitation decreases, or vice versa, for these large areas.

For those in the UHI camp, how exactly does UHI warm Siberia/glaciers/the arctic?

Sounds like a non-sequitor to me. Either Jones et al, correctly estimated the UHI bias or not. This can conceivably be determined without considering phenomena outside the areas from which the data was sampled.

262
Well I guess its complete the 1930s and 1940s warming is almost expungned from the intrumental record. The cooling in the 1970s is also expungned from the NH record. I am waiting for further revisions to the SH record to bring it more in line with the NH. RSS has already done that with the satellite record. This will largely remove the need to invoke ‘deus ex machina’ aerosols and whatnot from model parameterizations. Models trump data.

#266. Boris, I’ve made it quite clear on a number of occasins that there is ample evidence that the 20th century is warmer than the 19th century. In western Canada, moraines from 19th century glaciers were very advanced. All I’m trying to do right now is figure out what Jones did. Can you find out what stations he used in HadCRU – that would simplify the exercise? Surely the AGW effects are substantial enough that this information can be disclosed? The Jones 1990 stations are just a start. How do you, Boris, justify the secrecy?

“More seriously, I think it’s just awful to manipulate children in this way – in this case to support entirely insane policies to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent. Half of children between 7 and 11 years lose sleep because of this panic.

The people who are selling cigarettes to kids are treated as criminals: are the acts of the alarmists better for the kids’ health? Let me say in advance that when the hysteria is over, I will think it is a good idea to prosecute the authors of this insanity.”

I know you are trying to keep this site focused strictly on the science involved. However, in reading your more recent posts about Phil Jones, Climate Dynamics, NSF, Thompson, etc. and their constant and seemingly pervasive attempts to prevent anybody else from gaining access to their data or their methods, combined with the many seemingly inexplicable statistical gyrations, truncations of data, and cherrypicked datasets, I have a question for you that I wonder if you are willing to answer.

You frequently reach back to your mining background and refer to prospectuses and assay reports and the efforts of unscrupulous entrepreneurs to misrepresent the findings of exploration programs. At what point do you think you will find yourself unable to continue assuming that there is no motive behind all the seemingly inexplicable actions by the researchers and journals who are the subjects of your posts? You seem to have endless patience and a willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to these guys, and perhaps I am just misreading your efforts to avoid saying something for which you could be sued, but it seems like their actions and unwillingness to cooperate with even the most basic examination of what they are claiming to have done with their research at some point have to lead you to the conclusion that they are pursuing an agenda and their motive in doing what they are doing is to drive that agenda forward, regardless of what reality is.

Do you think you will reach a point where you are unable to continue assuming the best intentions but flawed execution by these individuals and organizations? Or is there a point where you have to give up and take the accumulated evidence and make an accusation of scientific misconduct to an appropriate authority?

I really don’t have an agenda in asking that or even a specific individual or group in mind. It just seems that in the face of continued obfuscation and misrepresentation by the individuals and the various journals and research organizations, at some point the odds of innocence on their part have to eventually decline to zero. Any thoughts?

Of course that is the danger of researchers going under the assumption that the science surrounding AGW is settled. Whenever they see data that doesn’t seem to fit in, there will be a temptation to always assume the numbers just need some “adjustment”, since it can’t be the theory and/or models that are wrong. Just keep trying to adjust the numbers until you find a way to make them fit, and then stop.

#274. Bill F, I understand the question. However, the underlying motives are irrelevant for the analyses that I do, so I don’t discuss them. If these folks don’t want to disclose things, then they aren’t going to sue, where they would not be able to evade discovery.

In one of our articles (EE 2005), we observed that prospectus standards require disclosure of adverse results and commented unfavorably on the MBH failure to disclose adverse results that were within their knowledge. The NAS panel evaded these issues and did not even follow up Mann’s denial that he had even calculated a verification r2 statistic.

I did make a complaint of academic misconduct against Ammann, who issued a UCAR press release that all our claims were unfounded, even though their results had a verification r2 of 0 as we had reported, and was adamant in person that he would not report these adverse results. While the institution did nothing to Ammann, the adverse verification results were included in the final version of the paper and were cited by the NAS Panel (after we drew the revision to their attention.) So the complaint had a positive impact in this case.

Fair enough…but do you ever foresee a point where you would write a post suggesting that combination of cherrypicked data set X, truncated a certain way by scientist A coupled with the unwillingness of scientist A to provide the data and the use of improperly justified incorrect statistical procedure Y in a paper promoting Z as a conclusion would lead you to suspect that scientist A is intentionally attempting to massage his data to justify a false conclusion Z for some motive? Or at the point where you have reached the end of your means to obtain the data and verify the methods and results or justify the conclusion drawn, do you just shrug your shoulders and walk away?

I only ask, because it seems as though the stakes for climate science have become extremely high in recent years. This field is no longer one where scientists are merely competing for scarce grant money…it is a potential multi-billion dollar business for financial firms, governments, etc. all waiting in line for the carbon trading/tax gravy train to start rolling down the tracks. The old incentive for fudging data used to be the potential for a few thousand more dollars to fund your extra grad student for an extra year of thesis work. Now these guys are the gate keepers of potentially billions of dollars in economic activity.

I know when you started this, you were simply looking to audit the data…but I think you have built a pretty compelling case that at least a few of the scientists out there are clearly driven by their own agenda to commit acts that are either very close to or are over the line. The willingness of people in their own fields to turn away and refuse to even consider questioning the methods and/or data choices of the few “rock stars” suggests that they may recognize the damage that could come to their entire field if the most influential among them is found to be “wearing no clothes” I guess I just see taking the cases you have built against some of these people somewhere where it could be acted upon as the logical extension of your work to date…but I understand completely if you have no interest in taking it there yourself.

Anyway, I enjoy the site very much and appreciate your tireless efforts to dig beneath the surface of these issues. I would have long since given up in disgust were I in your shoes, so I admire your dogged determination to force these guys to toe the line of proper scientific practices.

Aha, a controlled experiment on the effect of temperature on plant growth.

The response of plants to temperature has gained renewed interest as researchers speculate on the biotic response to climate change. It is of particular interest in the Arctic, due to recent warming trends and anticipated continued warming for the region. This long-term, multispecies study confirms that changes in temperature affect the functioning of plants in their natural environment. It also demonstrates that the influence of temperature should be considered in the context of natural variability within a given location. The study examined natural temperature gradients, interannual climate variation, and experimental warming at sites near Barrow (71°18′ N, 156°40′ W) and Atqasuk (70°29′ N, 157°25′ W) in northern Alaska, USA. At each of the four sites, 24 plots were experimentally warmed for 5-7 years with small, open-top chambers, and plant growth and phenology were monitored; an equal number of unmanipulated control plots were monitored. The response of seven traits from 32 plant species occurring in at least one site is reported when there were at least three years of recordings. Plants responded to temperature in 49% of the measured traits of a species in a site. The most common response to warming was earlier phenological development and increased growth and reproductive effort. However, the total response of a species, for all traits examined, was individualistic and varied among sites. In 14% of the documented responses, the plant trait was correlated with thawing degree-day totals from snowmelt (TDD[sm]), and temperature was considered the dominant factor. In 35% of the documented responses, the plant trait responded to warming, but the interannual variation in the trait was not correlated with TDD[sm] and temperature was considered subordinate to other factors. The abundance of temperature responses that were considered subordinate to other factors suggests that prediction of plant response to temperature that does not account for natural variability may overestimate the importance of temperature and lead to unrealistic projections of the rate of vegetation change due to climate warming.

re 279 – Lubos comments refer to criminalizing strong statements about which he has a diffferent opinion. I like how he managed to bring it in a context of “but think of the children.”
I recall not all that long back here, claims were being made that ‘alarmists” were proposing to criminalize ‘deniers” and there was much outrage about it.

re 279 – Lubos comments refer to criminalizing strong statements about which he has a diffferent opinion. I like how he managed to bring it in a context of “but think of the children.”
I recall not all that long back here, claims were being made that alarmists” were proposing to criminalize deniers” and there was much outrage about it.

I would hope that he was making that comment with tongue in cheek and putting a bit of fun onto those who would use “but think of the children” to restrict rights of individuals.

Few question 20th century warming, but UHI effects have clearly contaminated the surface data. How much, I don’t know. It’s an important question awaiting a definitive study. Hard when scientists hide data. Here is an interesting comparison of two stations from Japan, one rural and one urban; data to 2001 courtesy of John Daly (r.i.p.): http://www.john-daly.com/stations/osaka.gif.

RE: #249 – By comparing those satellite reports with more “up close and personal” ones such as those of the Anchorage NWS ice desk (done using aircraft, boats and people observing from shore) you start to gain an appreciation for the likelihood of underreporting by the satellites. For their little slice of the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea, the ice desk consistently showed greater extent over the past year or so.

I realize that this blog is mostly dedicated to tree rings and temperature proxies but has anyone read Dr. Hug’s piece athttp://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm that shows the effects of CO2 are 1/80 of what is claimed in the IPCC?

Re 301:
Yes, the problem with Hug is that he doesn’t consider the sidelobes, where most of the absorption increase happens, with increasing co2. He limits himself to the 14-16 micron band, where the spectrum is already saturated.
See this graph

Weather, not climate …. California, upper 30s N latitude … we have been in a dry Siberia Express pattern. Even at that, we’ve continued to have fast moving showery cold fronts. The NWS got faced yesterday by a “dry” front which managed to squeeze out a few hundreths here at the coast …. meanwhile a foot of new snow in the eastern highlands. Expecting another fast mover tomorrow into Friday then, incredibly, for this late in the year, an occluded front with both Siberia Express and Pineapple Express quadrants. NWS are actually considering advisories, possibly a few warnings, for Saturday. Goes without saying, we’ve had some cold records the past couple of mornings – the only thing preventing frost in more sheltered inland valleys has been the wind.

And thank you in turn for your reply, Mr. Eschenbach. Let me see if I can format my reply properly.

Idso’s comment about the relationship of experiments 1-3 with the larger climate system is worth quoting.

Consider the differences among these three situations. Different atmospheric constituents are involved (dust and water vapor), as well as different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (solar and thermal wavelengths), different time scales (hours to many months), and different magnitudes of forcing functions. Yet all situations yield essentially the same value for the near-surface air temperature response function – except for the last approach, where a dozen stations on the Pacific Coast yielded a result that was only half as great; I took that value to be an upper limit for the world’s ocean surfaces. Thus, although the data base I worked with was admittedly not global, the good agreement among the results of such diverse experiments suggests that the atmospheric response function thus elucidated may be globally applicable. Obviously, more experiments of this nature would be helpful in establishing the validity of this supposition.

I fail to see how Idso’s response is adequate. The crucial criticisms remain; even though he has measured the effects from “hours to many months”, that still doesn’t give us the story over the course of a year, or over many years’€”which is precisely what we are concerned about. For that matter, the fact that he has not accounted at all for ocean currents, for example, also does not give me confidence that his results are meaningful for anywhere besides the land area of the extreme SW US over the course of a single season. Of course they “may” be globally applicable; but they are probably not, and the point of the multiple critics of Idso is that few, if any, climate scientists share his confidence, based on the crucial limitations of his experiments that I have just repeated.

I note that you seem to ignore part of the sentence as well. Ramanathan say one of the two possible reasons they did not detect the warming is that it is not happening because of feedbacks or other factors in the natural system …

And those feedbacks and factors are accounted for in the GCMs’€”largely having to do with the predominance of the aerosol component through the 1970s (see below), though also including other forcings such as the solar variation.

In addition, while a greater than decadal scale “ocean thermal inertia” is cited all the time as a possible reason for lack of change in air temperatures, I have yet to read an explanation of exactly how that works. Bearing in mind that heat is not mixed downwards in the ocean and that the overturning of the oceans is on the scale of thousands of years, what would be the mechanism for a two or three decadal delay?

Ironically, the mechanism is the warming itself’€”infrared from ggs warms the “skin” of the ocean (that is a technical term), thus slowing the release of past warmth from the ocean into the atmosphere. It also helps trap new warmth caused by sunlight. Here is an
explanation from our friends at RealClimate :)

In addition, if there were such a delay, it would be readily visible in the instrumental record. Here are the land (CRUTEM) and sea (HadSST2) temperatures for the last 150 years

That graph is not too surprising, since HadSST2 records surface temperatures. The “lag” is not in the time series/”secular trend”; it’s in the vertical distribution of heat in the ocean. Deep-sea temperatures have indeed been growing faster than surface temperatures over the last 30-40 years’€”here’sLevitus et al 2005 You’re looking for Figure 1 (assuming you can see the article.) Note the change in the system around 1970’€”not just in terms of temperature, but in terms of heat distribution. Yes, there was arguably a release of heat during the 1980s, which the authors acknowledge (but surface temperatures, not on this graph, rose during that period) though maybe not’€”could be within error range. Besides, the point is that the lower levels are retaining more heat than they used to, relative to the upper layer. And heat content went back up again anyway, and as you can see, the deep-sea layers continue to contain more heat than the surface. In fact, although there was a recent report that the sea had once again lost temperature from 2003-2005, the authors of that report (Lyman et al 2006) have (as of 4/9/07) revised their data and withdrawn their conclusion.

Here you completely misunderstand Ramanathans point. It was not that GCMs would detect the effect of CO2 by the year 2000. It was that Ramanathan’s analysis should be able to detect the warming. His analysis depends solely on the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 as calculated by the GCMs. But that has not changed (or grown any more accurate) in thirty years – it is still given as 1.5° – 4.5° for a doubling of CO2.

I concede that I may have misunderstood Ramanathan. However, I am not sure that I understand your point. Ramanathan is talking about the absence of empirical confirmation in 1980 of warming due to CO2. He admits that there could be factors for this which his analysis does not take into account–maybe the model over-predicts the signal, or maybe there are other factors. He then says that taking into account both possibilities, we should detect the warming any time prior to 2000. As he says on page 4 (Science 290:766)

“We interpret fig. 5 as giving an approximate range of time when we might expect to be able to establish statistically that model predictions are correct. That range extends from the present if the positive-feedback models are correct to near the year 2000 if the zero-feedback models are correct.”

He is using “detect” to refer to the data’€”as he says on page 5 (Science 290:767) immediately following the quotation I provided in my last post:

“In addition, we conclude that it will be easiest to detect effects in summer data.”

I am by no means a scientist and Ramanathan’s technical analysis is well over my head, but I do not think this is a misreading of his conclusion.

Finally, you are repeating the AGW mantra about aerosols as though it were established. We have very little information on the amount of airborne aerosols during the period in question, and we have even less information on the effect of the aerosols. The fact that we can cherry-pick values for both of those variables and force a GCM to match the historical record means nothing.

Although the aerosol story is a complicated one, the data, as I understand it, are mostly based on 1) the global dimming data, which is rather well-attested and directly measures the effect at least in terms of reduced incident surface solar radiation, and 2) volcanic data, which is also rather well-documented. Together the aerosol effects of these two forcings, when added into GCMs, do a pretty decent job of simulating the temperature curve. I agree with everyone who says that the proof really lies in its predictions; but since they have been predicting increased temperatures since the early 1980s, and have so far been right (whereas no other hypotheses have made any confirmed predictions at all) I see little negative evidence so far. I also agree that the role of clouds should be better-understood, and presumably aerosols would be involved with that. Fortunately, climate scientists are collecting cloud data as we speak and should have results within the next few years.

The aerosol hypothesis fails because during the time in question (~ 1945-1980), the Southern Hemisphere cooled more than the North (not possible with aerosols)

Yes, it is possible with aerosols. It is due to 1) the larger land area of the Northern Hemisphere, and 2) differing ocean dynamics. In addition, the Southern Hemisphere is more heavily affected by sea ice effects, and the Northern Hemisphere is affected by an arctic feedback. Here is some helpful information

and the global land temperatures and sea temperatures decreased at the same rate (also not possible with aerosols).

I am not sure why you make this claim. Why do you think aerosols would not affect the oceans?

In fact, although there was a recent report that the sea had once again lost temperature from 2003-2005, the authors of that report (Lyman et al 2006) have (as of 4/9/07) revised their data and withdrawn their conclusion.

Their adjustment removes the conclusion of a rapid and significant 2003-2005 cooling trend…but the expected warming trend from 2003-2005 is still not there.

The correction also notes that data from the “warm-biased” XBT instruments “make up a significant fraction of historical ocean temperature measurements” and that the author’s found further downward correction is required to remove this warm bias from the historical record.

mzed: FWIW, I agree that the heat content of the oceans is the best parameter that gives us an idea how much warming there is, and I’m very interested in this. Relative to sensitivity, can you explain why temperatures at low elevations in the Desert Southwest are 2-3 degrees hotter in July than temperatures in the Deep South (same latitude, almost same elevation). I keep asking this over at RC, and nobody will answer the question directly–they keep conflating heat content with temperature. I know the atmosphere has more heat in the South, but this does NOT translate to temperature, which suggests a negative water vapor feedback to me.

“RE #268 I expect that we’ll see removal of the 1935-1945 “hump”. The hump will probably be attributed to bad data from the World War Two era that needs some adjustment.”

People are using the HadCRU data and I wonder why. Isn’t this the bucket adjusted data? The corrections are wrong and so the data is corrupt. I notice this because it distorts the Kreigsmarine effect during the years of WWII. I appreciate the fact that we have to use what data we are given, but there must be a better set in this case, for example by taking off the bucket correction. This will leave the WWII hump where it belongs, squarely on top of the oil spills caused by the Battle of the Atlantic and not mysteriously rising two years before.

And thank you in turn for your reply, Mr. Eschenbach. Let me see if I can format my reply properly.

Idso’s comment about the relationship of experiments 1-3 with the larger climate system is worth quoting.

Consider the differences among these three situations. Different atmospheric constituents are involved (dust and water vapor), as well as different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (solar and thermal wavelengths), different time scales (hours to many months), and different magnitudes of forcing functions. Yet all situations yield essentially the same value for the near-surface air temperature response function – except for the last approach, where a dozen stations on the Pacific Coast yielded a result that was only half as great; I took that value to be an upper limit for the world’s ocean surfaces. Thus, although the data base I worked with was admittedly not global, the good agreement among the results of such diverse experiments suggests that the atmospheric response function thus elucidated may be globally applicable. Obviously, more experiments of this nature would be helpful in establishing the validity of this supposition.

I fail to see how Idso’s response is adequate. The crucial criticisms remain; even though he has measured the effects from “hours to many months”, that still doesn’t give us the story over the course of a year, or over many years’€”which is precisely what we are concerned about. For that matter, the fact that he has not accounted at all for ocean currents, for example, also does not give me confidence that his results are meaningful for anywhere besides the land area of the extreme SW US over the course of a single season. Of course they “may” be globally applicable; but they are probably not, and the point of the multiple critics of Idso is that few, if any, climate scientists share his confidence, based on the crucial limitations of his experiments that I have just repeated.

mzed, you weaken your argument terribly when you appeal to consensus. Yes, I know that the majority of climate scientists agree with you … but that means nothing except that the person making the consensus argument is lacking in substantive arguments. In any case, the objection is that the long term effects of say oceanic warming, etc., are not included. But Idso is not talking about the long term climate response here, he is talking about the so-called “instantaneous” forcing. He discusses longer term, global forcing in some of his other “natural experiments”.

I note that you seem to ignore part of the sentence as well. Ramanathan say one of the two possible reasons they did not detect the warming is that it is not happening because of feedbacks or other factors in the natural system …

And those feedbacks and factors are accounted for in the GCMs’€”largely having to do with the predominance of the aerosol component through the 1970s (see below), though also including other forcings such as the solar variation.

As you seem to truly believe that “feedbacks and factors are accounted for in the GCMs”, allow me to let you down gently.

FEEDBACKS

1) Some feedbacks are unknown, and thus cannot be “accounted for in the GCMs”.

2) Many known feedbacks (e.g. DMS from plankton, methane from plants, effects of melting of permafrost) are not included in most GCMs.

3) Some known feedbacks (e.g. clouds), are not well enough quantified to even say whether they are positive or negative, but are included in GCMs nonetheless.

4) The interaction of the feedbacks is very poorly understood. A recent NASA study showed that, contrary to expectations, the reduction in Arctic snow and ice cover did not reduce the albedo as expected. This was because it was almost entirely negated by a simultaneous (and likely related) increase in cloud cover. Not one of the GCMs predicted that.

5) The mechanics of the largest known feedback, clouds, is so poorly understood that cloud cover is not calculated in GCMs, but is parameterized.

FACTORS (FORCINGS)

1) As with the feedbacks, we must assume that there are unknown forcings.

2) Many GCMs do not include even the known forcings. In the Santer study of tropospheric temperatures, he listed the forcings of the 19 models used, the cream of the crop of GCMs. In his list we find:

79% did not include mineral dust
74% did not include sulfate aerosol indirect effects
74% did not include sea salt
63% did not include organic carbon
63% did not include land use change
53% did not include black carbon
53% did not include volcanic aerosols.
42% did not include solar irradiance
37% did not include tropospheric and stratospheric ozone

Since 42% don’t include the sun!!, and 63% don’t include land use change!!, this alone disproves your contention that the “feedbacks and factors are accounted for in the GCMs.”

3) The level of scientific understanding of most of the forcings, including in some cases even the sign, is rated by the IPCC as “Low” or “Very Low”.

4) The model are “tuned” to give the desired results. Yes, a forcing may be included as you say … but that by no means indicates that it is correct.

In addition, while a greater than decadal scale “ocean thermal inertia” is cited all the time as a possible reason for lack of change in air temperatures, I have yet to read an explanation of exactly how that works. Bearing in mind that heat is not mixed downwards in the ocean and that the overturning of the oceans is on the scale of thousands of years, what would be the mechanism for a two or three decadal delay?

Ironically, the mechanism is the warming itself’€”infrared from ggs warms the “skin” of the ocean (that is a technical term), thus slowing the release of past warmth from the ocean into the atmosphere. It also helps trap new warmth caused by sunlight. Here is an explanation from our friends at RealClimate

While the folks at RealClimate may be your friends, they are not mine. They are so afraid of dealing with real scientific questions that they routinely censor mine as well as scientific questions posed by others, which is something friends, or even honest scientists who are not friends, do not do … but I digress. More to the issue at hand, the link you posted says absolutely nothing about a 1-2 decade delay in the ocean response. All it shows is that a one W/m2 change in forcing warms the ocean surface by two thousandths of a degree … I fear I don’t understand your point here.

In addition, if there were such a delay, it would be readily visible in the instrumental record. Here are the land (CRUTEM) and sea (HadSST2) temperatures for the last 150 years

That graph is not too surprising, since HadSST2 records surface temperatures. The “lag” is not in the time series/”secular trend”; it’s in the vertical distribution of heat in the ocean. Deep-sea temperatures have indeed been growing faster than surface temperatures over the last 30-40 years’€”here’s Levitus et al 2005 You’re looking for Figure 1 (assuming you can see the article.) Note the change in the system around 1970’€”not just in terms of temperature, but in terms of heat distribution. Yes, there was arguably a release of heat during the 1980s, which the authors acknowledge (but surface temperatures, not on this graph, rose during that period) though maybe not’€”could be within error range. Besides, the point is that the lower levels are retaining more heat than they used to, relative to the upper layer. And heat content went back up again anyway, and as you can see, the deep-sea layers continue to contain more heat than the surface. In fact, although there was a recent report that the sea had once again lost temperature from 2003-2005, the authors of that report (Lyman et al 2006) have (as of 4/9/07) revised their data and withdrawn their conclusion.

Yes, HadSST2 records surface temperatures … but for the atmosphere to have a 2 decade delayed response to forcing, the ocean would have to heat up the atmosphere. The only way this could happen is for the ocean surface temperature to rise. But look at the graph – the ocean surface stops cooling and starts rising at the same time as the atmosphere, not two decades later. Where is the mechanism, and the evidence, for a two-decade ocean driven delay?

Here you completely misunderstand Ramanathans point. It was not that GCMs would detect the effect of CO2 by the year 2000. It was that Ramanathan’s analysis should be able to detect the warming. His analysis depends solely on the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 as calculated by the GCMs. But that has not changed (or grown any more accurate) in thirty years – it is still given as 1.5° – 4.5° for a doubling of CO2.

I concede that I may have misunderstood Ramanathan. However, I am not sure that I understand your point. Ramanathan is talking about the absence of empirical confirmation in 1980 of warming due to CO2. He admits that there could be factors for this which his analysis does not take into account’€”maybe the model over-predicts the signal, or maybe there are other factors. He then says that taking into account both possibilities, we should detect the warming any time prior to 2000. As he says on page 4 (Science 290:766)

“We interpret fig. 5 as giving an approximate range of time when we might expect to be able to establish statistically that model predictions are correct. That range extends from the present if the positive-feedback models are correct to near the year 2000 if the zero-feedback models are correct.”

He is using “detect” to refer to the data’€”as he says on page 5 (Science 290:767) immediately following the quotation I provided in my last post:

“In addition, we conclude that it will be easiest to detect effects in summer data.”

I am by no means a scientist and Ramanathan’s technical analysis is well over my head, but I do not think this is a misreading of his conclusion.

I’ll leave this as a matter upon which honest men can disagree.

Finally, you are repeating the AGW mantra about aerosols as though it were established. We have very little information on the amount of airborne aerosols during the period in question, and we have even less information on the effect of the aerosols. The fact that we can cherry-pick values for both of those variables and force a GCM to match the historical record means nothing.

Although the aerosol story is a complicated one, the data, as I understand it, are mostly based on 1) the global dimming data, which is rather well-attested and directly measures the effect at least in terms of reduced incident surface solar radiation, and 2) volcanic data, which is also rather well-documented. Together the aerosol effects of these two forcings, when added into GCMs, do a pretty decent job of simulating the temperature curve. I agree with everyone who says that the proof really lies in its predictions; but since they have been predicting increased temperatures since the early 1980s, and have so far been right (whereas no other hypotheses have made any confirmed predictions at all) I see little negative evidence so far. I also agree that the role of clouds should be better-understood, and presumably aerosols would be involved with that. Fortunately, climate scientists are collecting cloud data as we speak and should have results within the next few years.

I have posted elsewhere on the global dimming, which did not occur during the period in question. Volcanic data is very different, and unrelated to aerosols such as SO2, because it is injected into the stratosphere and thus has different effects than low-lying aerosols.

Temperatures have been increasing for four centuries at this point. You are free to think that predicting increasing temperatures says something about the climate models, but I find it totally unconvincing.

The aerosol hypothesis fails because during the time in question (~ 1945-1980), the Southern Hemisphere cooled more than the North (not possible with aerosols)

Yes, it is possible with aerosols. It is due to 1) the larger land area of the Northern Hemisphere, and 2) differing ocean dynamics. In addition, the Southern Hemisphere is more heavily affected by sea ice effects, and the Northern Hemisphere is affected by an arctic feedback. Here is some helpful information

I fear that the link was less than helpful. There is a lot of handwaving, but he glosses over the important question – why should the south cool more than the north, when virtually all of the aerosols are in the north?

and the global land temperatures and sea temperatures decreased at the same rate (also not possible with aerosols).

I am not sure why you make this claim. Why do you think aerosols would not affect the oceans?

Because by and large, the anthropogenic aerosols are found over the land, as that is where they are generated … there is a good image of the location here. As you can see, they are centered over the land, and should therefore cool the land much more than the ocean … but this has not happened.

4) The interaction of the feedbacks is very poorly understood. A recent NASA study showed that, contrary to expectations, the reduction in Arctic snow and ice cover did not reduce the albedo as expected. This was because it was almost entirely negated by a simultaneous (and likely related) increase in cloud cover. Not one of the GCMs predicted that.

Willis, do you have a link? I’m not familiar with that study.

And the NASA website still has several multimedia examples where they claim melting ice will reduce the albedo and increase warming.

Above 15.5um additional CO2 has absolutely no effect since transmission is already zero due to the H2O.
Below 13.0 um additional CO2 has little effect since transmission is dominated by H2O.
There’s a little window between 13.5 and 14 um where CO2 is more important than H2O in blocking IR.

Re #313 Good point. Rather than a cardboard container, it seems like a old burlap bag would make a more environmentally-friendly container for the dearly-departed.

I would also toss in a bag of 13-13-13 fertilizer.

For those with guilty consciences and out of carbon credits, a burial in burlap bag under a tree might work, but for Heaven sakes do not even contemplate a man made bag of 13-13-13. How about buried in burlap bag under the old oak tree on a bed made from my compost pile? That could even make Al proud.

On their front page:
Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from Iceberg Lake, Alaska, USA. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.

Description
The authors “present a varve thickness chronology from glacier-dammed Iceberg Lake [60°46’N, 142°57’W] in the southern Alaska icefields,” where “radiogenic evidence confirms that laminations are annual and record continuous sediment deposition from AD 442 to AD 1998,” and where “varve thickness increases in warm summers because of higher melt, runoff, and sediment transport.” This work revealed “a clear manifestation of the Medieval Warm Period” between AD 1000 and 1250, the peak warm-season temperature of which (“smoothed with a 40-year lowpass Butterworth filter”) was clearly higher than it was at the end of the 20th century.
—-
And here is the actual abstract of that paper. Note the jökulhlaup evidence and the correspondence between varve thickness and local tree ring chronology, which the Idsos somehow failed to mention, and also the fact that the authors make a radically different claim than the Idsos represent.:
Titre du document / Document title
A 1500-year record of temperature and glacial response inferred from varved Iceberg Lake, southcentral Alaska
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
LOSO Michael G. ; ANDERSON Robert S. ; ANDERSON Suzanne P. ; REIMER Paula J. ;
Résumé / Abstract
We present a varve thickness chronology from glacier-dammed Iceberg Lake in the southern Alaska icefields. Radiogenic evidence confirms that laminations are annual and record continuous sediment deposition from A.D. 442 to A.D. 1998. Varve thickness is positively correlated with Northern Hemisphere temperature trends, and more strongly with a local, ‘ˆ¼600 yr long tree ring width chronology. Varve thickness increases in warm summers because of higher melt, runoff, and sediment transport (as expected), but also because shrinkage of the glacier dam allows shoreline regression that concentrates sediment in the smaller lake. Varve thickness provides a sensitive record of relative changes in warm season temperatures. Relative to the entire record, temperatures implied by this chronology were lowest around A.D. 600, warm between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1300, cooler between A.D. 1500 and A.D. 1850, and have increased dramatically since then. Combined with stratigraphic evidence that contemporary jökulhlaups (which began in 1999) are unprecedented since at least A.D. 442, this record suggests that 20th century warming is more intense, and accompanied by more extensive glacier retreat, than the Medieval Warm Period or any other time in the last 1500 yr.

Canadian Arctic ice as good news for seals. Rather different from the front page picture and story in the UK papers a couple of weeks ago of a baby seal apparently drowning due to melting of the sea ice.

This work revealed “a clear manifestation of the Medieval Warm Period” between AD 1000 and 1250, the peak warm-season temperature of which (”smoothed with a 40-year lowpass Butterworth filter”) was clearly higher than it was at the end of the 20th century.

This is different from the portion of the report quoted by Lee:

Relative to the entire record, temperatures implied by this chronology were lowest around A.D. 600, warm between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1300, cooler between A.D. 1500 and A.D. 1850, and have increased dramatically since then. Combined with stratigraphic evidence that contemporary jökulhlaups (which began in 1999) are unprecedented since at least A.D. 442, this record suggests that 20th century warming is more intense, and accompanied by more extensive glacier retreat, than the Medieval Warm Period or any other time in the last 1500 yr.

I think that the difference between the two is that the passage quoted by Lee refers to the period since/around 1999 where as the information inferred(?) by the Idso’s is to data that is “smoothed with a 40-year lowpass Butterworth filter” which would suggest the period 1959 to to 1998.

In fact they could both be right and only a thorough and independent read of the paper would tell one way or the other.

I was curious about the “jökulhlaups” and decided to look into it (expecting to fond a northern branch of the jackalope family). I found an interesting article,Southeast Alaska Jökulhlaups.

Jökulhlaup, an Icelandic term pronounced YO-kul-hloip, refers to a flood resulting from the breaching of a glacier-dammed lake (jökull meaning “glacier,” hlaup meaning “flood burst”). There are at least two locations in Southeast Alaska where these events are known to occur with regularity: the Tulsequah Glacier near Juneau and the Salmon Glacier near Hyder.

Glacier-dammed lakes in Southeast Alaska are a lingering result of the Little Ice Age. Fluctuations in the ice field, that still grips the Coast Mountain Range, create these lakes which may be located between glacier and valley walls, beneath or inside the glacier, or on top of the glacier.

The article suggests that upstream Jökulhlaups may be precipitated by changes in downstream Jökulhlaups.

#320, 326.
If some one emails me a copy of the Loso article, I’ll post up this graphic today (otherwise, I’ll retrieve a copy of the paper the next time I go to the U of Toronto).

I don’t think that one varve series hot off the press is likely to conclusively resolve the medieval-modern relationship. However, just to re-state a point, I do not exclude the possibility that proxy evidence could show to a reasonable person that the modern period is warmer than the medieval period. However, I don’t think that present reconstructions have done so – because they are compromised by bristlecones addiction and/or biased selection and/or other methodological flaws.

Further to this discussion, if you got to the CO2Science web site they say:

Our Medieval Warm Period Project is an ongoing effort to document the magnitude and spatial and temporal extent of a significant period of warmth that occurred approximately one thousand years ago. Its goal is to ultimately provide sufficient real-world evidence to convince most rational people that the Medieval Warm Period was: (1) global in extent, (2) at least as warm as, but likely even warmer than, the Current Warm Period, and (3) of a duration significantly longer than that of the Current Warm Period to date.

Regardless of which quote you quarry this referenced paper supports the Idso’s fist contention about the Medieval Warn Period in that is was, “global in extent” or at least not limited to Europe/Greenland/the North Atlantic and runs counter to the MBH99 conclusion for the Northern Hemisphere.

Further to the authors’ supposition regarding:

contemporary jökulhlaups (which began in 1999) are unprecedented since at least A.D. 442, this record suggests that 20th century warming is more intense, and accompanied by more extensive glacier retreat, than the Medieval Warm Period or any other time in the last 1500 yr.

This may be spurious conclusion if you superimpose the jökulhlaup observation on a continuous long term glacial retreat since the end of the last ice age (of the non-little variety). If I recall correctly, there were still glaciers in Quebec as little as 7,000 years ago. I’ll see if I can rediscover the link for this.

1) The important thing is that the SH, in spite of increasing GHGs and no meaningful anthropogenic aerosol forcing, did not WARM during this period. The fact that it cooled even more than the NH only reinforces the idea that the sulphate aerosols / mid-century cooling connection has litle basis, as they played no role in the SH.

3) Before the HadCRUT correction all the above was also pretty clear but that didn’t stop AGW proponents from claiming that models did a good job at hindcasting the mid-century cooling by taking into account the aerosol forcing. That could be “true” for the global temperature but surely not for the SH regional record.

Re 305:

Yes, it is possible with aerosols.

No it isn’t. The NH can warm more due to increasing GHGs than the SH. But the SH cannot cool more than the NH due to sulphate aerosols released to the NH troposphere that are washed out downwind in approx. 2 weeks.

The first gives some details about the TWO MILLION POUNDS project funded by Research Councils UK and the EPSRC to look into ways of assessing and reducing the uncertainties in complex computer models (including GCMs).

Here is a snippet from the projects aims page

“Modelling is fundamental to research across all areas of science, industry and decision-making, yet uncertainty in model predictions is poorly understood at best; more often it is just ignored. The potential impact for both modellers and model users of having a technology that is accessible, and can routinely quantify and analyse uncertainty, even in complex computer-intensive models, is enormous. It will become possible for the first time to validate computer intensive models in a principled statistical framework, to compare models and to gauge their adequacy for specific purposes. For instance, it will for the first time be possible to say whether a complex model is genuinely better than a simpler one that represents reality less accurately but is less sensitive to misspecification of its inputs. We will be able to examine the role of ensembles of models in gauging model structure uncertainty. It will also become possible for the first time to quantify the value of model calibration and data assimilation in improving the accuracy of model predictions. We will even be able to target research or observational studies to address unacceptable levels of uncertainty, and to predict the ways in which such research will change uncertainty.”

These aims seem laudable but as a UK tax payer I’ll reserve judgement on whether or not this is value for money or not but I’m interested in what other visitors to this web site think given its relevance to GCMs and what has been posted on other threads on this blog (requests for a full assessment of the unceratintie sin GCMs). At present the ‘Listen Again’ audio is not yet available but as and when it is I’ll post a link to it here.

Re #318 The 13-13-13 fertilizer bag said it was “from plants”, but it didn’t dawn on me until now that it meant DuPont and Dow plants.

Now that you have humorously reminded me that fertilizers with a designation as precise as 13-13-13 can have “organic” origins, I am seriously wondering how they can do that. I still say to be completely correct and comfortable one should use one’s own compost pile.

Prof Roger Short is barking mad.
Six weeks ago he gave a seminar on global warming. In his abstract he wrote:

“James Lovelock, in his masterly review “The Revenge of Gaia” (Penguin, 2006), points out that continued global warming will lead to drought, deforestation and desertification, which will make the Earth an increasingly inhospitable environment for man. The human population, currently 6.5 billion, is predicted to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050. But Lovelock suggests that by the end of this century, we may only be able to feed 0.5 ‘€” 1 billion. What happens to the remainder? Malthus, thou should’st be living at this hour!

China is the only great nation to have seen the light, and implemented a One Child Family Policy. The United States, the world’s most affluent and most effluent nation, has a rapidly increasing population which may exceed half a billion by 2050, about twice the current figure. The situation is not helped by the fact that one of the world’s major religions refuses to approve of contraception. Doesn’t the Pope realize that condoms help prevent Global Warming?”

Not! This is the problem. There is a whole subculture out there still playing the old late 1960s – early 1970s Erlichian tape. The “Soylent Green” vision of the future. They were predicting that we’d be over 10B by now (if not extinct). They sure got that wrong. They assumed that the large post WW2 families in Western countries would continue to be the norm through the end of the century and that birth control would never take hold in the 3rd world. When in fact, by the 1980s, in the West, it was already obvious we’d soon hit our peak of natural growth and start falling so rapidly that we’d hear calls to import labor to do jobs “we won’t do.” But instead of acknowledging their error, they now hang their hats on the third world. Funny thing is, beyond a handful of those countries, natural increase has also slowed much more rapidly than anyone would have ever imagined. Once a person gets a cell phone or otherwise tinged by modernity, the whole big family thing loses its appeal and bourgeoisification starts to set in. The whole world will be on the Euro like negative trend within a generation if not sooner. I expect the peak in population prior to ’50.

RE: #338 – “A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies — often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival” = Paul Ehrlich

Question: Aren’t the water vapor and CO2 spectra in #314 transmission spectra? In which case water vapor transmission is indeed highest at about 9 micrometers. That is backed up by the emission spectrum in #319 which is a close match to the 20 C black body curve at 10 micrometers with the exception of the dip for the ozone absorption band.

Also, the total column absorption may be misleading because the partial pressure of water vapor falls off more rapidly with altitude than does carbon dioxide. So assuming a constant lapse rate, which I’m not altogether sure is really justified, increasing carbon dioxide can possibly still have a significant influence on surface temperature even though the total column absorption doesn’t change much.

Not! This is the problem. There is a whole subculture out there still playing the old late 1960s – early 1970s Erlichian tape. The “Soylent Green” vision of the future. They were predicting that we’d be over 10B by now (if not extinct). They sure got that wrong. They assumed that the large post WW2 families in Western countries would continue to be the norm through the end of the century and that birth control would never take hold in the 3rd world. When in fact, by the 1980s, in the West, it was already obvious we’d soon hit our peak of natural growth and start falling so rapidly that we’d hear calls to import labor to do jobs “we won’t do.” But instead of acknowledging their error, they now hang their hats on the third world. Funny thing is, beyond a handful of those countries, natural increase has also slowed much more rapidly than anyone would have ever imagined. Once a person gets a cell phone or otherwise tinged by modernity, the whole big family thing loses its appeal and bourgeoisification starts to set in. The whole world will be on the Euro like negative trend within a generation if not sooner. I expect the peak in population prior to 50.

There’s a couple of ways to estimate future populations. We have good data from 1961 – 2004. The growth rate has been steadily dropping. By my calculations, if we extend the average drop in growth rates linearly, by 2050 the population will be 9.17 billion. For comparison, the UN Median Estimate is 9.19 billion in 2050.

Or we can look at the post-1990 drop, which has been slightly steeper. Extending that drop gives us a peak in 2042, with a 2050 population of 7.88 billion The UN Low Estimate for 2050, for comparison, is 7.79 billion. So my estimates are very close to the UN estimates, which gives some confidence in the figures.

The UN high estimate is 10.76 billion, I’d throw that out as unrealistic. I’d say that the 2050 population will likely be around eight and a half billion, plus or minus a billion.

While these numbers are large, from 1961 to 2006 the world population more than doubled (~210%). There’s more than twice as many people on the planet than when I was in high school, and yet people are living better and eating better than they were in the sixties, even the poorest people.

On the other hand, from now to 2050 we’re only looking at a population increase of about 17-38%, not 210% … me, I think we’ll deal with that without calamitous problems or meltdowns, but YMMV …

My personal guess is that we will see the population peak within 10 years. We already have two major countries, Russia and Japan, with falling populations. (I’g going to leave out discussions of how AIDS is devastating many African countries, because that could turn around if a cure is found.) In Europe, birthrates have been below replacement for over a generation, only immigration keeps their populations growing. There are only a handfull of countries left with birthrates higher than 3 or 4 per woman, and even those are falling fast.

One of the big problems with the UN estimates is that they assume that all countries whose population is currently dropping, will have their rates stabilize when they hit replacement. (2.1 live births per woman) Problem with that assumption is that it has never happened. To date, every country whose birthrates have hit replacement, have had their birthrates continue to fall.
The UN also assumes that countries with birthrates below replacement will over the next decade, return to replacement. Once again, that has not happened either. Countries in Europe have had their birthrates well below replacement for decades now, with no evidence that they are moving upwards. Despite growing govt efforts to increase the rates.

I’m passing along a request that I had from my son. He’s in a college level biology course, and for some reason they are covering global warming as a topic. He’s looking for two articles – one on each side of the global warming issue. Can anyone point to something that gives general overviews of the arguments on each side?